© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist, photo: Benoit Pailley.
New paintings and sculpture by the artist Zevs are on view in Oïkos Logos, a solo exhibition presented by French designer Ora ïto and the MAMO Museum in the unique location of La Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s famed apartment complex, or experimental “Habitat System,” in Marseille.
This show brings together a set of three series of paintings: “Jet Paintings,” “Septic Paintings,” and the “Evolution Series,” as well as three sculptures, “The best for the end,” “Labitation” and “Manpower.”
© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Benoit Pailley.
© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Benoit Pailley.
Taking its name from the Greek root oïkos (house) and logos (science, knowledge), the exhibition is structured around the question of ecology and offers a reflection on the relationships between humans, their activities and their environment. In La Cité Radieuse, the Radiant City, the artist warns of the drift of humanity “playing with fire.”
Ora ïto’s MAMO lies atop La Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s masterpiece of design. “A place among the clouds devoted to art and design,” it is here that Zevs makes his commentary on the role of man within the exploitation of the planet’s resources. Three series of paintings are exhibited alongside provocative sculptural work.
© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Benoit Pailley.
At this site of discourse and reflection, Zevs urges his audiences to consider their own relationship with and place on Earth—specifically, drawing attention to their use of the world’s elements within a consumerist economy and an increasingly fragile environment.
© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Benoit Pailley.
The dialogue Zevs creates between his artistic oeuvre and ecological urgency is extended to the museum store for this exhibition. By transforming the concept of a museum shop into a work-in progress-project, Zevs anticipates the “tokenization” of the world and crituques the nature of NFTs. Here, every part of the store is part of a whole, and part of Zevs’s work. Physical or digital, each object is a fragment of the final work which will end when the stocks are depleted. This store is based on an opposition of the nature of the NFT phenomenon. Zevs will work with real material objects that are usually found in museums stores, such as postcards, posters, and tee-shirts, and a video showing the liquidation of his 29 CryptoLogos NFT.
Zevs recounts, “since the tokenization on the blockchain consumes still today an extraordinary amount of energy (an NFT can take the energy of one human for one year), I don’t tokenize anything. It would be a misinterpretation to consider a tokenization act into that exhibition. This store is based on a critic of the NFTs and give the possibility to the public to participate on its own LIQUIDATION.”
© Zevs 2021, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Benoit Pailley.
Zevs, aka Aguirre Schwarz, is an artist living in Paris and Berlin. His work, satirical and engaged, invites introspection into our consumption patterns and questions the shortcomings of a consumerist society with an underlying cynicism.
Oïkos Logos will be on view at the Mamo from June 23 to September 19, 2021.
