federATION
FRÉDÉRIQUE LOUTZ

September 11^th – October 24^th 2009

Preview from 6pm on Friday September 11 ^th

Reading by Frédérique Loutz, Catherine Hales and Ernesto Castillo on Tuesday 13^th October at 8pm

From 11 September to 24 October 2009, French graphic artist Frédérique Loutz will be presenting her new prints in the Galerie Jordan Seydoux (Auguststraße 22 in 10117 Berlin). Loutz, who divides her time between France and Germany, is one of the most interesting French artists of the younger generation.

At the heart of the exhibition, ‘federATION’, which will be showing colour lithoprints from the Berlin Tabor Presse studio as well as other drawings by the artist, will be the book fedre et le vilain petit icare, the drawings for which were made between 2008 and 2009 in Berlin and which was published by Michael Woolworth Editions in Paris in Spring 2009. For the work on the book fedre et le vilain petit icare, large-format pencil drawings were created, which have already been shown in the French Embassy in Berlin in the exhibition ‘In the Feathers’ in September 2008 and are currently in the Frissiras Gallery in Athens. fedre et le vilain petit icare has also been shown in Loutz’s Paris gallery, Claudine Papillon, and presented to the public with a performance at the Force de l‘Art 02 in Spring 2009 in Paris.

The book came into being as the artist’s first collaboration with Berlin poet Ernesto Castillo, who wrote the German texts for fedre et le vilain petit icare. The focus of both drawings and texts is on the intertwining of myth and fairy tale, of the good and bad ending. The indecisiveness of Fedra is contrasted with the determination of Icar and the reliable duckling’s unconscious trust in fate. While Fedra yields wholly to her weight and being earth-bound, Icar tries to fly, and the reliable duckling lacks all motivation, eating and growing unconsciously until the day when of its own volition it will reveal itself to be a swan. The texts deal throughout, too, with weight and gravity. This hybridity means that motifs of desires of the flesh, i.e. sex, eating, growth and transformation, emerge in both drawings and texts, amounting to a condition humaine which reveals the psycho-pathological state of being of the contemporary existence of the individual, providing her with grounding and sky through myth and fairy tale. Not least, the attraction of the book is in the combination of drawings and texts which deal with the same material in different ways. The pen, the ‘Feder’, is used to write as well as to draw.

Frédérique Loutz has been involved with printing and books for some time. fedre et le petit vilain icare is her latest book. Among other distinctions, the artist was an artist-in residence in the Villa Medici in Rome between 2006 and 2007, and was a joint winner of the 2009 Guerlain Prize, which is awarded by collectors for drawings. Together with Ulrich Lamsfuss, she was a winner of the 2006 Frissiras Award. She took part this year in the Force De l‘Art 02 and can currently be seen in the group exhibition elles@centrepompidou in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, in which the Centre Pompidou presents exclusively women artists from its collection.

Besides the show in the gallery, works of Loutz will be presented from 20th Sept. to 20th October in the french restaurant Le Gavroche, Oderberger Straße 22, 10435 Berlin-Pzb. During this periode the guests will eat on tablecloths designed by Loutz and printed in a limited edition.