IL LEE

La Collection BIC

Curated by Hervé Mikaeloff and Ingrid Pux

April 14 - May 13, 2018

Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS

Paris, France

Art Projects International is pleased to announce the opening of La Collection BIC at the Centquatre, in Paris, France, on view to the public from April 14 to May 13, 2018.  This exhibition will unveil for the first time selected contemporary works of art in the BIC Collection, including more than 140 works by over 80 artists from around the world.

The exhibition features MBL-1302 (2013), a ballpoint ink on paper work by Il Lee, celebrated for his pioneering work with ballpoint pen that began nearly 40 years ago and continues today. In recent years, as shown in MBL-1302, Il Lee’s signature massings of looping, energetic lines have given way to more angular, more interrupted, even more urgent, styles of mark making and orchestrations of repetitive lines that suggest futurist depictions of movement and fields of structure.  MBL-1302 was first exhibited in IL LEE: New Ballpoint Works at Art Projects International, New York in 2014.

La Collection BIC

14.04> 13.05.2018

In the years following its launch in 1950, the BIC® Cristal® pen was very quickly chosen and used by established and demanding artists. They appreciated the quality, the precision, the ease with which they could get it and also their ability to quickly execute scribbled sketches or major works. In 1998, an exhibition was held in Valle d'Aosta in tribute to Baron Bich, a native of this region, and on this occasion artists create new works related to the brand's products. This is the first step that infuses the desire of a collection to BIC on the initiative of Bruno Bich. We are happy today to share it with you at CENTQUATRE-PARIS. Through more than 80 international artists and 150 works, the simple everyday object (pen, razor, lighter) becomes a medium of creation. Artists transform, transpose, transfigure. The exhibition is their laboratory. Through a stroll through multiple and unsuspected universes, this collection is eclectic and abundant. The artist diverts the object from its original function, reinvents it and encourages us to decompartmentalize the borders of drawing and painting, writing and image, design and art.

For Bruno Bich, Chairman and CEO of BIC Group: "This collection measures how well BIC® products can appeal to artists around the world, both as a creative tool and as a source of inspiration. We look forward to sharing these works for the first time with the public. " 

Commissariat: Hervé Mikaeloff and Ingrid Pux