rss feed Imprime esta páxina Envía esta páxina
New horizons. French Contemporary Artists

New horizons. French Contemporary Artists

File

Dates: 
1 June 2007 - 30 September 2007
Place: 
Exhibition galleries of the ground floor
Hours: 
Tuesday to Saturday (including holidays) from 11 am to 9 pm. Sundays, from 11 am to 3 pm
Production: 
CRAC Alsace / La Centrale Electrique / MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo
Curator: 
Hilde Teerlinck

Works on exhibition

The exhibition gathers up to 67 works, including photographs (Katia Bourdarel, Vincent Labaume), videos (Virginie Barré, Katia Bourdarel, Brice Dellsperger, Laurent Grasso, Clarisse Hahn, Martin Le Chevallier, Valérie Mréjen), installations (Virginie Barré, Alain Declercq, Julien Discrit, Philippe Meste, Bruno Peinado), videoinstalations (Élodie Huet), esculptures (Virginie Barré, Vincent Labaume, Corinne Marchetti), paintings (Patrick Jeannes), drawings (Élodie Huet, Virginie Barré) and models (Katia Bourdarel).

Venues

  • CRAC Alsace, France (September 3rd 2006 - February 11th 2007)

  • La Centrale Électrique, Brussels, Belgium (March 22nd - May 6th 2007)

  • MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (June 1st - September 23rd 2007)

Summary

NEW HORIZONS gathers the work of a group of French artists who, over the last few years, began to excel in the international art scene. The exhibition, shown in Vigo after having been exhibited at CRAC Alsace and La Central Electrique, Brussels, is structured into several topics, which glimpse a leitmotif, a common concern of the artists on their social and political context. Born all of them in France, they have been developing their artistic activity over the last twenty years, and now tackle the most burning issues of the social, political and cultural French scene.

The curator's selection intentionally gathers much of those artists - lesser-known abroad -, together with others better known in the international scene, in order to give the public a panorama, as complete as possible, of the present French artistic scene

The layout and the installation of the works in the galleries at MARCO are intended, on the one hand, to give evidence of the differences, strengthening the individual characteristic of each work, emphasising some links and groups among the works themselves at the same time, both in relation to their content or to the topics they tackle, the medium they use, and their relation and communication to the viewer.

In the midst of this diversity, analysis of contents permits a classification in various thematic axes, at the same time interconnected according to each artist's intention and their presence in the galleries: works with religion as their leitmotif - Clarisse Hahn's portraits of a community and the matter of identity in Valérie Mréjen's videos - are mixed with the analysis of the social-political context - contemporary critics and articles on the capitalist world in Bruno Serralongue's and Vincent Labaumes's works; Alain Declerq's terrorist plots and collective paranoid - and also mixes with the peculiar interpretations of sexuality and violence in Philippe Meste's installation or in Brice Dellsperger's transgressor ambiguity.

Corinne Marchetti's, Katia Bourdarel's, Amandine Sacquin's, or Virginie Barré's relationship with the world of childhood, the cinema and the comic, contrast with the sharp and ironic view of the contemporary society Bruno Peinado's or Patrick Jeannes' works, as well as in Fabien Rigobert's photograph. Thinking on the moving image and its interaction with the public - both by means of the tv, the video and the new technologies - is well represented in Julien Discrit's visual and sound installation at the central panoptical, in Laurent Grasso's virtual eclipse virtual, in Martin Le Chevallier's interactive video or in Elodie Huet's video-installation, which request public interaction to be completely understood. All these works tell us about the relationship between time and space, and its capability of communication with the viewer.

Acting as the starting and the ending point of the exhibition, and as the image that illustrates the cover of this group exhibition catalogue, a photograph of the Atlantic beach of La Baule, a work by Frank Perrin, welcomes and waves the visitors from the museum's façade.

Artists

 Alain Declercq
 Amandine Sacquin
 Brice Dellsperger
 Bruno Peinado
 Bruno Serralongue
 Clarisse Hahn
 Corinne Marchetti
 Élodie Huet
 Fabien Rigobert
 Frank Perrin
 Julien Discrit
 Katia Bourdarel
 Laurent Grasso
 Martin Le Chevallier
 Patrick Jeannes
 Philippe Meste
 Valérie Mréjen
 Vincent Labaume
 Virginie Barré

Curatorial text

"The title, NEW HORIZONS, refers to our desire to offer the public different perspectives on French contemporary creation. The selected artists belong to different generations, and while some share common ground, each approaches his or her chosen subject in a highly individual way.

All are the product of a generation dominated by the influence of the new technologies. The interactive videos and installations of Fabien Rigobert, Julien Discrit, Laurent Grasso and Martin Le Chevallier take the spectator into a world that fuses science and fiction to form a third dimension.

The work of Katia Bourdarel, Amandine Sacquin, Virginie Barré and Corinne Marchetti transports us into a peculiar kind of Wonderland, a surreal reconstruction of dreams and teenage reverie mixed with references to comic and pop art. Other artists such as Clarisse Hahn and Valérie Mréjen make use of an almost documentary approach in their treatment of such delicate subjects as faith and religion. Bruno Serralongue employs strategies similar to those of photojournalism, and Elodie Huet uses video to conduct a sharp analysis of everyday life.

Sex and violence are ubiquitous in society, both in life and on screen. Alain Declercq, Brice Dellsperger and Philippe Meste show the extent to which these aspects are treated banally and superficially by the mass media. The multi-faceted and intensely personal approaches of Bruno Peinado, Vincent Labaume and Patrick Jeannes defy all attempts to pigeonhole them; and Frank Perrin, creator of the image on the front cover of the catalogue, presents us with a kind of metaphor of modern man, connected to the world through his MP3 or alone and lost in the midst of a great city.

Whatever the artists' chosen subject and mode of expression, the aim of this project is to offer the international public the opportunity to discover the ‘secret force' of French contemporary art and take lesser known artists towards new horizons."

 

Hilde Teerlinck
Exhibition Curator

Curator

Hilde Teerlinck


Hilde Teerlinck is a founder member of the ArtAids Foundation. Director of FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkirk, she previously was Director of the Centre Rhénan d’Art Contemporain (CRAC Alsace), Altkirch and artistic Director and coordinator of the Mies van der Rohe Pavillion in Barcelona. Between 1999 and 2002 she combined her work as a teacher at École Superieur d'Art de Perpignan, working as art critic and collaborating in various publications — Parkett, Kunstforum, Kunst nu, Artefactum, Transversal, Quaderns, and Ars Mediterranea — together with her curatorial work at l'Espace d’Art Contemporain - Halle au Poisson in Perpignan. Together with Han Nefkens, she created the project Access for All [Acceso para todos] in 2004.