Keeping company: sculptures by Alain Kirili and the 19th-century artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux were recently juxtaposed in a French museum. The exhibition made the case for the enduring worth of free and direct modeling in contemporary practice - Report From Valenciennes

Art in America, Dec, 2002 by Anne Rochette, Wade Saunders

Kirili resists the linearity of an art history that would keep each artist snug in his own time. He has just inaugurated a public commission of three 12-foot-high vertical posts in cast and polychromed resin at Provence's Abbaye de Montmajour, parts of which date back to the 12th century. The sculpture consciously evokes '60s pieces by Barnett Newman, such as Here II. Kirili asserts the need for, and the right of, artists to erase chronology and stylistic barriers, to interact with other art forms, to converse with the dead--to keep their own work alive by whatever means. By showing in Valenciennes alongside Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Kirili has picked up a forgotten thread which links the earlier artist's masterful modeling with the improvisation and speed crucial to much contemporary work.

"Kirili Dialogue Avec Carpeaux" was seen at the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes [Apr. 6-Sept. 23]. It was accompanied by a catalogue containing essays by Phillippe Sollers, Serge Lemoine and Patrick Ramade, as well as an interview with the artist conducted by Ramade.

Anne Rochette and Wade Saunders are Paris-based artists who also write on art.