Helly Nahmad Gallery, New York is pleased to present Le Chant de la Grenouille: The Surrealists in Conversation, a group exhibition featuring over fifty works by Jean Arp, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Paul Éluard, Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst.
The exhibition takes its inspiration from the photograph above, taken in Paris in 1929 by Man Ray. In order to recreate the intellectual and social atmosphere that surrounded the brilliant group of artists, poets and writers in 1930s Paris, the gallery emulates a Parisian café, the setting where the Surrealists often met and exchanged ideas.
The gallery presents a series of Surrealist themes running throughout the installation, or rather, topics for discussion within the café. They are: The Feminine Land, The Arc of your Eye, (the preceding both borrowed from Éluard Poems), The Lovers, The Dream, The Minotaur and Obscure
Objects of Desire (after Luis Buñuel’s film). Theses ‘conversations’ between the Surrealists are presented as artworks loosely assembled in groups, as well as the occasional handwritten text on the wall.
The Helly Nahmad Gallery, in true Surrealist fashion, has also published its own newspaper called Le Chant de la Grenouille, or the Song of the Frog, taken from the title of a Max Ernst painting on display. The newspaper guides visitors through these topics with accompanying writings and poetry. It also includes in-depth biographies by Steven Harris and an essay, Café Cyrano, by Giuseppe Scaraffia, which tells the story of the Surrealists and the café culture.
Le Chant de la Grenouille: The Surrealists in Conversation is curated by Marzina Marzetti, Gallery Director, and is open to the public from October 30th to December 23rd, 2014