December, 2002

Current Exhibit

Any Where Out of the World

Main Gallery:

Saâdane Afif, Lina Jabbour, Nicolas Moulin,

Olivier Nottellet, Samuel Rousseau

Opening Reception, Saturday December 7th from 7-10 p.m

Exhibition dates: December 8th-28, 2002

Opening Hours, Friday and Saturday 12 noon to 5 pm

A flying scape made with a world map, a French flag made with trash clothes, kitsch canvas becoming alive and crazy, a science fiction video made in the streets of Paris.. all these pieces will bring the viewer of this show to a parallel world.

The artists in this exhibition are all resident in France, but the real link between them is the particularity of their respective perceptions of reality. Indeed, each of them has a clear preoccupation with, (and propensity for), viewing his or her own environment with the freshness of an outsider¹s gaze. By reassessing selected fragments of the world, as if newly discovered, unknown languages seem to appear.

In borrowing Baudelaire¹s English line Any Where Out of the World, the exhibition title directly evokes the displacement of context(s), a significant tool for all of these artists.

As in Baudelaire¹s use of English, Saadâne Afif, has a special interest in displacement through language or languages, creating objects and situations which might allow him to organize the unclassifiable. In the case of Lebanese-born Lina Jabbour, her work sustains the nomadic momentum of peoples displaced by politics and conflict. The result is often a shantytown esthetic rendered in purified style- cars made from shopping bags, for example. In the meantime, Samuel Rousseau (one of the founders of the famous Brise Glace artists¹ squat in alpine Grenoble) has recently been as likely to be spotted in Spain or Peru, elaborating his (mostly video-based) technological primitivism. Mad dogs inside armchairs, goldfish inside eggs, giants in houses...this is really video as a means to sculptural ends. While Messrs Moulin and Nottellet, both more attached to Paris than the others, seem to rely on its stately weight to counterbalance a springboard for fantasy- (rather like Jules Verne, inventing fabulous voyages from the safety of his Parisian armchair). In this way, Nicolas Moulin¹s careful selection of urban details, make his photographs look like science fiction, while Olivier Nottellet¹s drawings examine and stretch the strangeness of banal detail first discovered right under our noses, or in the daily life at our fingertips.

This exhibition has been made possible with generous support from: Ville de Marseille, Conseil Régiona Provence-Alpes-Côte-d¹Azur, Conseil Général des Bouches du Rhône, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Provence-Alpes-Côte d¹Azur, Association Française d¹Action Artistique, and the cultural services of the French Embassy.

Artists-In-Residence:

We will present the work of London based artists George Doneo and Peter Lamb who are presently engaged with our International Artist In Residence Programme in the Project Space. This project was made possible by the generous support of the British Consulate in Los Angeles.

North Gallery:

Also showing will be Philippe Jacq with his filmic exploration of the Mona Lisa/Mona Vanna, in the North Gallery.

Gallery Hours are 12 - 5pm Saturdays, or by appointment.

Raid Projects

602 Moulton Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90031

Tel: 323/ 441-9593