Un Cabinet de Curiosités, Part. 1 An exhibition of 10 Parisian artists Curated by Dr. Antoine Lefebvre With Charlotte Hubert Farah Khelil Juan Mendizabal Benjamin Sabatier Caroline Sebilleau Cannelle Tanc Frederic Vincent Samuel Yal And guests! @ Undercurrent Projects, 215 E 5th Street, NYC, 10003 By Appointment only Opening 12/18 at 6pm

Fontaine Cuvier, Paris.

Proceeding from Anthony Huberman's seminal essay For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Cat that isn't There, Lefebvre explores the reality of art as nonknowledge. Un cabinet de curiosités assembles a group of young, emerging Parisian artists who take a scientific approach to art-making. They work in the fields of economy, geometry, publishing, or social science, as well as the traditionally related disciplines of history or philosophy. These artists twist the way we usually view art, and create things that are not necessarily as they appear to be. These works are often strange, disorienting, and much more complicated than they initially appear. Taking his inspiration from the 19th century artist publisher and curator, Antoine Lefebvre brings to New York the work of the most brilliant minds he found in the French capital. Tied by both art and friendship, they are not necessarily all French, but they came to Paris to find what it is famous for: good food, wine, and artistic comradery. On taxonomy: "This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’." ― Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1966.

Charlotte Hubert, Being a bell, metal bell and Crayola on Japanese paper, 13 cm high, 2014. “In French slang, amongst other significations, the bell refers to the head, as a hollow item filled with a dysfunctional brain, just like an imbecile. Being a "Bell" is thus being totally naive and therefore ridiculous. So when I lived in Kyoto, at the back of my house was a deep forest. One afternoon in February 2011, I decided to go and wander in the forest. All along the way, I saw men and women ringing little bells. I loved to imagine that the Japanese people were playing music for the trees. This melody was spreading all through the forest. A woman stopped to warn me : This forest was full of bears, only the sound of these bells would scare them away. I've never been a good runner but I sprinted out of the forest faster than any Japanese bear.

Farah Khelil, Point of view, listening point (, music box, polyester film partition and document, 2014. Point de vue, point d’écoute is a participative sound installation that Khelil started in 2012 which involves a reading device called componium and different modes of language. Texts are first translated into Braille alphabet and then manually perforated on a componium partition. Through a system based on twenty or thirty musical notes the text becomes music when the viewer/reader activates the device by turning the crank clockwise. Quotes, elements of a collective memory then bring a new resonance.

Juan Mendizabal, Vers l’espace extérieur 1 (Towards the outside space), Acrylic on canvas, 23 x 23 cm, 2014 Vers l’espace extérieur 2 (Towards the outside space), Acrylic on canvas, 23 x 23 cm, 2014 Vers l’espace extérieur 3 (Towards the outside space), Acrylic on canvas, 23 x 23 cm, 2014 Premier non-lieu (First non-site), Acrylic on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2014 Deuxième non-lieu (Second non-site), Acrylic on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2014 Troisième non-lieu (Third non-site), Acrylic on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2014 Quatrième non-lieu (Fourth non-site), Acrylic on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2014 From very little to nothing. The writer Robert Walser was transferred, against his own will, to the asylum of Herisau from this of Waldau, in which he was been interned at his own request and with the agreement of his psychiatrist. In Herisau, Walser was employed filling boxes of matches. That was for him an alignment of instants to witch summit oneself, breaking free of daily life sorrows. A way to be liberated, by submission, from any possible tight avoiding the drawn of his glance into things and the carving of his watching into words. For long-time, nobody knew that Walser was using his micro writing method while working in the asylum. Minimal sized letters were forming texts in the matches, with the possibility of some pieces to be selected, enlarged, read one day. Roman Opalka was lining up numbers and self-portraits. Was permanently counting. Was lining up also, here and there, very few pictures of historical references, the Aurigue of Delphes, the use of canvas. That was to be considered into the History of Art, to be call a painter. He was showing a classic painter’s machine portraying the own deletion of the painter himself. The work of time. Work of time? We should wonder if the time is the subject. Most likely, the time seemed a tool bringing here the direction pointed by an arrow. The direction we shall need for any project to go on. Then, the possibility will be for us in been one more actor in the becoming of that project, as do the time itself. Opalka was adding, each time, a little more white in the grey background of the canvas, so the white numbers he was painting were painted in a surface becoming clearer. He did that for years. That was going to be, at the end, a white on white issue. In that way he was going to be, at the end and as he said, an old man whispering to himself. Old Robert Walser walked one day in the cold to exhaustion and died melted with the snow in a long stroll. Nothing gruesome in all that. Just artists pointing some limits to celebrate the existence of art works building a sense that was not gifted. — Juan Mendizabal

Benjamin Sabatier & IBK, BU.650g, 15 x 10,8 x 5,5 cm , concrete, 2007. BU.530g, 18 x 8 x 5 cm , concrete, 2007. BU.670g, 12 x 10,5 x 3 cm , concrete, 2007. BU.540g, 11,5 x 10 x 4 cm , concrete, 2007.

Caroline Sebilleau, Under my prospective # CMYK Box set, offset in a silkscreen cardboard box, 2014 Écran [Screen] – 9 Smith, Inkjet and silkscreen mounted on wood, 32,5 x 47,5 cm, 2012. Écran [Screen] – High line 1, Inkjet and silkscreen mounted on wood, 16,5 x 25 cm, 2012. Écran [Screen] – High line 2, Inkjet and silkscreen mounted on wood, 16,5 x 25 cm, 2012. Écran [Screen] – East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Inkjet and silkscreen mounted on wood, 16,5 x 25 cm, 2012. Écran [Screen] is a research about photography and urban landscape. Taken in New York City in 2012, these pictures embody Sebilleau’s interest for sculptural shapes in architecture. The white screen enhances it. By hiding a part of the photograph, it shows the different layers of meaning.

Cannelle tanc, Pli (Fold), Cut and folded city map of New York, 2014, Archéologie (Archeology), Black and white photography of the Shelly Canyon, Wax, 2014. Archéologie (Archeology), Cut postcard, feathers, fossilzed wood, 2014.

Frédéric Vincent, Punk, 2014, bleach on book, 20,5 x 13, 5 x 2 cm, 2014. Dé-coll/age, paper and resin on cardboard, 17 x 23,5 x 6,5 cm, 2013. Voyeur, wax, paper and cardboard, 20 x 23 x 12 cm, 2013. M.B, Musée d’art Moderne…, acrylic and resin on canvas, 24 x35 cm, 2012.

Samuel Yal, Notes on the melancholy of things, porcelain, bone, metal, glass and magnet, variable dimension, 2014. Trouvailles, choses, petits trésors de la nature, essais pour des projets futurs... Au fil du temps les objets s'accumulent sur les étagères de l'atelier. Il finit par se tisser dans leur juxtaposition hasardeuse un parfum qui pourrait être celui d'un imaginaire à l'oeuvre. Le titre de cette pièce, à géométrie variable et à la déclinaison sans fin, se réfère au recueil de poèmes de Rilke: "Notes sur la mélodie des choses". La partition qui se joue ici n'est pas celle du présent de la musique des mots mais celle de l'accumulation des choses, sorte de chemin du petit poucet à l'envers témoignant de la fuite du temps. Self-portrait 9CH/ Process, Alginate, glass, cork and porcelain, variable dimension, 2014. S'étalant sur plusieurs mois, un long processus naturel de réduction de la forme, "dilue" un autoportait. Ce procédé rejoint la dilution mesurée en CH opérée par l'homéopathie, soit la dilution de l'essence d'une chose (végétale, animale, minérale...) dont la substance à dose infinitésimale est censée soigner les effets néfastes de cette même substance à des doses importantes. Ainsi les méfaits de l'abeille sont endigués par l'administration de l'abeille elle-même (Apis Mellifica 9CH). Principe de similitude, qui soigne le mal par le même mal à des doses différentes, comme le signifiait Paracelse, alchimiste et médecin de la Renaissance « Rien n'est poison, tout est poison : seule la dose fait le poison». Si dans l'histoire de l'art l'autoportait a pu prendre des formes imposantes, si dans l'art contemporain la surenchère est du côté du monumental, le résultat final est ici minuscule. Dosage infinitésimal de la représentation de l'ego, cette pièce se veut un remède à la prétention de s'imposer par la sur dimension de l'oeuvre. Autoportrait, antidote de l'autoportrait.