Colette / Laboratoire Lumiere

C.I.A. (the Colette Institute of Art) 2004.

“To be displaced, is to live in Limbo. If you are a great artist you can transform the nightmare into a dream, as an alchemist turns metal into gold.

Following the 9/11 tragedy which hit very close to home as I lived in the World Trade Center neighborhood; I was vacated from my home in 2007 without proper notice & was not allowed to return. In 2012 my studio/storage in the West Village was flooded with 9 ft of water. Miraculously most of my art was evacuated. These three consecutive personal catastrophes that stemmed from global issues: political, economic, and environmental, have greatly influenced my work & life and continue to affect it. For this exhibition I plan to do an on site work related to the subject.”

Image: INCUBATION BOOTH (all rights reserved: Colette the artist, 2014) from “metaphysical portraits and other experiments from Laboratoire Lumiere” @Undercurrent, NYC, March 2014.

“Colette’s artistic efforts have birthed a generation of creative minds who are hellbent on breaking art’s boundaries – and whether they acknowledge that Colette is the mother of their universe makes no difference because her body of work is often too elusive and ever-changing to pay homage to.”

(Akeem Duncan on “Homage to Colette” curated by IFAC, NYC, 2014.)

Colette / Laboratoire Lumiere (Previously known as Colette Justine), is a multi media artist recognized since the seventies for her pioneering and multifaceted works which have also filtered into popular culture. They include room & window installations/performances/street art, constructed photograph and her use of living personas.

Beginning with her ”living environment“ (which has been dismantled and in storage since 1982) Colette has been transforming and inhabiting gallery, museums and alternative spaces which often incorporate audio, clothing, personal belongings, etc.

Displacement, Impermanence, Uncertainty have been recurring themes in Lumiere’s installations, a name she began to use after 9/11, as well as an increasing interest in exploring “the invisible“ through Art. Her latest “metaphysical portraits “ refer to the style of her early paintings and resemble ‘interior maps’ of the subjects.

Colette’s art is in the permanent collections of several leading museums including the Guggenheim Museum & the Brooklyn Museum, NYC, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. She has exhibited at the MOMA, NYC, the Whitney Museum, the Moca LA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Texas etc.

Although New York is her home base. Colette is in Berlin for the great part of 2015, as a recipient of the Stifftung Starke residency.

For more information on Colette / Laboratoire Lumiere, visit Art Net monographs at www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_artisthome.asp?aid=425934057 and www.colettetheartist.com