PARIS.- Gagosian Gallery is presenting an exhibition of the miniature in art titled “Micro-Mania” featuring nearly sixty small masterpieces by a panorama of modern and contemporary artists, including Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Yves Klein, Jasper Johns, René Magritte, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Cecily Brown and Rachel Whiteread to name some.
Accordingly the Project Space has been transformed into a modern day cabinet de curiosités, a glass vitrine in the center of the gallery accommodates within the intricacies of diminutive sculptures such as Claes Oldenberg’s Pancakes and Sausages (1962), Alexander Calder’s Untitled (Standing Mobile) (1955), Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale (1959) and Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (1933) – which measures less than 3 centimeters in diameter – can be seen to full effect.
Among the intimate works that line the walls are Jasper Johns Map (1960), René Magritte’s Scheherazade (1947), Marcel Duchamp’s Peasant's Leg (1904-1905), and Richard Prince’s Untitled (Fireman Joke) (1987).
Existing at a scale not readily found in reality, the small works belongs to a separate, otherworldly realm where the rules of the physical world may no longer hold. Its proportions are akin to a children’s toy – it can function as the starting point to a private narrative, and act as an agent for nostalgia and fantasy.
Taking inspiration from artist and poet Joe Brainard’s 1975 exhibition “Think Tiny,” as well as Voltaire’s science-fiction story Micromegas – which strives to demonstrate that importance is not equitably reduced with size – “Micro-Mania” explores the aesthetic and imaginative qualities unique to the craft of the miniature drawing parallels and dialogues from artists with very different interests, mediums and times.
List of artists in the show: Carl Andre, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hans Bellmer, Dike Blair, Cecily Brown, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Hubert Duprat, Max Ernst, Hans Peter Feldmann, Urs Fischer, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, John Giorno, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns, Paul Klee, Yves Klein, Franz Kline, René Magritte, Man Ray, Claes Oldenburg, Steven Parrino, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Charles Simonds, Elaine Sturtevant, Blair Thurman, Cy Twombly, Piotr Uklanski, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Rachel Whiteread.
