Jesse Alpern, Eric Brown, Jonathan Callan, Benjamin Edwards, Jacob El Hanani, Adam Fowler, Tom Friedman, Maximo Gonzalez, Ray Johnson, Yayoi Kusama, Cameron Martin, Gloria Ortiz-Hernandez, Laura Paulini, Barry Ratoff, Fred Sandback, Kate Shepherd, Ken Solomon, Eduardo Stupia, Richard Tuttle, and Xawery Wolski

No pretext, no effect, no message: microwave doesn’t strive to classify a new movement. However, it identifies an international group of artists who deliberately reduce their movements and expressive media. These artists imperceptibly move their fingertips to create works of precision and minimal displacement in a quasi-monochromatic context: syntheses and syntactics that recall the reductionism of genetic maps or binary codes. But this intimacy doesn’t require mouse or keyboard, it is a dialogue of fingertips: art positively digital. The works stand on the borderline between drawing, knitting and writing. A meticulous discipline of the close-up at the antipodes of the instantaneous and the remote control. (microwave, one, Catalog, 123 Watts, 1999)

Josée Bienvenu gallery is pleased to present microwave, five, an exhibition of works on paper by twenty international artists. Since 1999, the (almost) annual edition of microwave has been an opportunity to confirm the emergence of a new attitude. As disenchantment and disdain dialogue loudly in major European art shows of the moment, a retro attitude seems to dominate the experience of making and viewing art. As an alternative to an inhospitable era, microwave, five identifies an international host of artists who commit to the obscene activity of paying attention. With intense focus, patience and precision, the artists in microwave document the relentless propagation of delicacy as a subversive activity.

In its fifth edition, microwave, five also conveys a dialogue of generations between younger artists such as Xawery Wolski, Jesse Alpern, Adam Fowler, Laura Paulini, Ken Solomon, and Cameron Martin, and the likes of Yayoi Kusama, Richard Tuttle, Fred Sandback, Jacob El Hanani, Ray Johnson, and Tom Friedman

The twenty artists in microwave set up and observe various processes of fragmentation and erosion of information. Close attention is given to execution, a concentration on the production process itself.