Larissa Fassler, Ground Control
As a major solo exhibition is currently being dedicated to Larissa Fassler at the Currier Museum in the United States, the gallery and the Centre d’art de Noisy-le-Sec are joining forces to present the artist’s recent work. Entitled Ground Control and Tissus Urbains these two exhibitions give a sense of the scope of the extensive urban and sociological work performed by Larissa Fassler in major cities around the world. Following Larissa Fassler’s residency in the autumn of 2020 at the Noisy-le-Sec Art Centre, these two exhibitions will integrate new sculptural and graphic works related to Paris, but also Berlin and New York. These exhibitions benefit from the generous support of the Canadian Cultural Center in Paris.
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Far from being neutral spaces, large city centers are, on the contrary, the terrain where major social issues find their physical manifestation. By combining different approaches, Ground Control sheds light on the often unseen issues of control that are at stake in the world’s megacities, which are both very physical, such as the control of real estate, and more imperceptible, such as collective memory and mobility.
The title also evokes the meticulous observation and research work carried out by the artist, whose large-scale cartographies also represent a form of control. A ‘soft’ form of control however, taking the word in its etymological sense: control comes from the Anglo-Norman French contrerole, meaning keeping a duplicate of a roll of accounts for verification purposes. Fassler’s work functions along similar lines, as a living archive establishing urban, sociological, historical and, finally, deeply political diagnoses of large public spaces. Because, unlike traditional maps, it is what plays out in the interstices of architecture that Fassler draws. It is the social body, in all of its contradictions, that is represented and above all spatialised.
