Chez Max et Dorothea
The Return of Histoire Naturelle
April 11 – May 18, 2024
Chez Max et Dorothea is pleased to announce The Return of Histoire Naturelle, the second group exhibition at our Los Angeles headquarters. The Return of Histoire Naturelle opens on Thursday, April 11th, and will run until May 18th. Please join us for an opening reception next Thursday, April 11th, 6 – 9pm.
The Return of Histoire Naturelle recontextualizes the seminal frottage series “Histoire Naturelle” by Max Ernst. These early frottages, a rubbing technique developed by Ernst, were created in 1925 and stand as one of his early responses to Surrealism. The following year, alongside his friend Paul Éluard, Ernst selected 34 frottage works to be printed by Jeanne Bucher, an important art publisher and gallerist in Paris. These 34 frottages that comprise the entirety of “Histoire Naturelle” will be exhibited at Chez Max et Dorothea | Los Angeles in conversation with 13 contemporary artists.
It was 100 years ago this October that André Breton released the first Surrealist Manifesto in Paris. Max Ernst was not there. Instead, he was in Indochina, tending to fix the marriage of Paul Éluard and his then-wife Gala, with whom he was in a ménage-à-trois relationship. Upon Ernst’s return to France, he was met with a whirlwind of philosophical thought about Surrealism embracing automatization and the inner world whether that be of dreams, imagination or wonder to carve new avenues to freedom. A year later in 1925, Ernst describes his breakthrough discovery of frottage, a French word that translates to rubbing which becomes a lifelong technique of the artist. Ernst describes the event as follows:
“On the tenth of August,1925… finding myself one rainy evening in a seaside inn, I was struck by the obsession that showed to my excited gaze the floor-boards upon which a thousand scrubbings had deepened the grooves. I decided then to investigate the symbolism of this obsession and, in order to aid my meditative and hallucinatory faculties, I made from the boards a series of drawings by placing on them, at random, sheets of paper which I undertook to rub with black lead. In gazing attentively at the drawings thus obtained… I was surprised by the sudden intensification of my visionary capacities and by the hallucinatory succession of contradictory images superimposed, one upon the other, with the persistence and rapidity characteristic of amorous memories. My curiosity awakened and astonished, I began to experiment indifferently and to question, utilizing the same means, all sorts of materials to be found in my visual field: Leaves and their veins, the ragged edges of a bit of linen, the brushstrokes of a ‘modern’ painting, the unwound thread from a spool, etc. There my eyes discovered human heads, animals, a battle that ended with a kiss (the bride of the wind), rocks, the sea and the rain…”
The Return of Histoire Naturelle looks to Ernst as a starting point to see how other artists have turned to invisible, imaginary worlds and generate new natural worlds. Within the ongoing reality of climate change and natural catastrophe, The Return of Histoire Naturelle provides alternative perspectives to see and experience the sentient world all around us.
Ever Baldwin’s work explores the depths of the unseen in a dual process of their many-layered paintings paired with meticulous wood-sculpted frames. California artist Carl Cheng embraces environmental decay and its natural lines as indexical marks that have long categorized his practice under the aegis of the John Doe Company. Mark Dion employs strategies around scientific and pseudo-scientific systems and natural history collections that question our dominant ideologies around knowledge and objectivity.
Cayetano Ferrer’s Foundation series creates fictional space through the reconfiguration of various carpet remnants from Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos into new architectural floor plans. David Gilbert’s photographed vignettes capture moments of spontaneous play and are evocative of the all-encompassing beauty around his environments. New York-based artist Henry Gunderson explores the terrain of technology and insects as a speculative warning to an upending natural apocalypse via his sculptural devices and paintings.
Florencia Escudero’s Frog Licker sculpture comes to life with its multiplicity of eyes and limbs creating an interstice between human, animal, and avatar.
Emma Kohlmann populates a personalized mythological touch on her paintings and pays homage to the many-leafed subjects in Ernst’s early frottages. New Mexico-based artist Sarah M. Rodriguez’s sculptural wall work combines aluminum casts of leaves with elements of cast glass to enshrine and preserve various animal tracks. Dana Sherwood explores alternative ecosystems through imagining various animals are her mothers and conceives her paintings as being in the womb of these animals.
Emma Pryde’s horse sculpture entitled The Musician encapsulates the resilience and tragedy of an artist who despite being injured by multiple arrows continues to move along on its wheeled feet. Lila De Magalhaes’s sculptural furniture acts as environments for her imaginative creatures to inhabit as both pupae and in their later stages of life as they transition from cradle to rocking chair. Thang Tran’s paintings utilize the scrupulous techniques of 16th-century Dutch still-life painters alongside gothic interiors that distill a transcendent sublimity of the natural world.
The complete list of artists in The Return of Histoire Naturelle include:
Ever Baldwin, Carl Cheng, Mark Dion, Lila De Magalhaes, Max Ernst, Florencia Escudero, Cayetano Ferrer, David Gilbert, Henry Gunderson, Emma Kohlmann, Emma Pryde, Sarah M. Rodriguez, Dana Sherwood, and Thang Tran.
The Return of Histoire Naturelle runs from Thursday, April 11th to May 18th, 2024, at Chez Max et Dorothea | Los Angeles.
Chez Max et Dorothea is an arts nonprofit dedicated to preserving the legacies of these artists and their final home and studios, which they designed in the South of France. At Chez Max et Dorothea we aim to look at the artist couple as both maverick individuals in their output while simultaneously celebrating and preserving some of their accomplishments within their relationship as equal partners and creative spirits. Chez Max et Dorothea operates as an exhibition space, artist residency, and research center open to the public centering around a dialogue between contemporary art and Surrealism.
Chez Max et Dorothea | Los Angeles is open Wednesday – Sunday 11 – 6 and by appointment.
For additional images or information, please call 310 819 0335 or email info@chezmaxdorothea.com
Chez Max et Dorothea | Los Angeles
2228 W. 7th Street (entrance on S. Grandview)
Los Angeles, CA 90057
instagram @chezmaxdorothea
