Curators : Emanuele Guidi & Antoine Marchand

Riccardo Giacconi belongs to that generation of Italian artists, now thirty-somethings, who, after years of retreat and virtual amnesia, have appropriated Italy’s history. It is, however, a history free of nostalgia, revisited not through an archival aesthetic, but rather, like memory or documents, as a system for reinterpreting the present. Giacconi’s research is focused on language and narration as forms of adherence or resistance to a socio-political context. He is particularly interested in the possible relationships between literature and visual arts, transposing poetic compositions or narratives into environmental installations, video and performance.

Giacconi’s exhibition at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, entitled The Variational Status, is composed of two different installations. The first, bearing the same name as the exhibition, has been co-produced with two Italian institutions: ar/ge kunst, in Bolzano (exhibition in winter 2016), and Centrale Fies, in Dro (performance in July 2017). In this project, Riccardo Giacconi interrogates the relationships between a variety of narrative forms (marionettes, street storytellers, flyers and anarchist pamphlets) and a series of acts of pre-political revolt, which took place between Italy and South America. Springing from Riccardo Giacconi’s interest in tradition as an “act of transmission”, The Variational Status evokes a narrative constellation encompassing animation, suggestion, orality and revolt.

The installation is based on the “espiritado”, a character from the Colombian tradition of puppetry, probably inspired by the murder of a police officer during a village celebration. The “espiritado” also brings to mind the episode of soldier Augusto Masetti, who in 1911 in Bologna shot at his commander in an act of insubordination against the Italian colonial war in Libya. The two figures share the total amnesia of their act of revolt, carried out in a trance or a state of somnambulism. While in Masetti’s case this circumstance turned him into a symbol of the anarchist movement around the world, which stepped in to take his defence, in the case of the “espiritado”, it became a comic element of a puppet character.

Conceived as a deconstructed puppet show, the installation consists of an automatized marionette (constructed in collaboration with the historical Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli), a plastic curtain that operates as a storyboard, and a series of posters of a Colombian puppet show, El Diablo en el pozo, (The Devil in the Well) printed using a 19th-century letterpress machine in Cali.

Working on archive documents, oral testimonies and theatre scripts, Riccardo Giacconi intertwines the real and fictitious vicissitudes of the two characters in order to question the status of those documents, which are not based on stable and certified supports, but rather which may exist solely in the form of “variations”.

Ekphrasis (2017), the second installation, has been produced specifically for the exhibition at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. It looks back at the story of singer-songwriter Alberto Camerini (b. 1951), who was extremely popular in the 1980’s Italy. Through the figure of this eccentric artist, a slice of recent Italian history is evoked, via objects and video excerpts. The installation revisits his career, his influences, his references, as well as anecdotes about his rapid success and decline, his interest in art history and puppet theatre and his activism radical Left movements in Milano during the 1970’s. The character created by Alberto Camerini, which made him famous, was a sort of electronic Harlequin, referencing the Italian theatre tradition of the Commedia dell'Arte (of which he was a great connoisseur) and combining it with the political energy of the European punk and the global impact of the emerging field of robotics. Rock ‘n’ roll Robot, written in 1981, is to this day his most famous song.

The installation created for the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne attempts to explore the hypothesis of a possible resonance, both formal and allegorical, between the artistic career of the singer, and the so-called “riflusso” (reflux), a general resignation to the private sphere and a concomitant political and social disengagement that characterized the transition from the 70s to the 80s in Italy. The artistic trajectory of Alberto Camerini is indeed altogether singular in the cultural landscape of Italy in the second half of the 20^th century. Studying it may help – according to Walter Benjamin’s terminology – to brush the recent Italian history “against the grain.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication dedicated to the project, The Variational Status, co-published by FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, ar/ge kunst in Bolzano and Humboldt Books in Berlin (with new essays by Andrea Cavalletti, Frans-Willem Korsten, Riccardo Giacconi and Andrea Morbio, and a conversation with the artist conducted by Emanuele Guidi and Antoine Marchand).

Riccardo Giacconi (born in 1985 in San Severino Marche, Italia) has studied fine arts at the University IUAV of Venezia, at UWE in Bristol and at New York University. His work has been exhibited in various institutions, such as WUK Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna (Austria) in 2016, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino (Italy) in 2015, Tranzitdisplay in Prague (Czech Republic) in 2014, the Résonance section of the Lyon Biennale in 2011 and MAXXI in Roma (Italy) in 2008. He was artist-in-residence at Centre international d'art et du paysage de Vassivière (France) in 2016, at MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Roma (Italy) and at La Box in Bourges (France) in 2013, and at Lugar a dudas in Cali (Colombia) in 2012.

He presented his films at several festivals, including the International Film Festival in Rotterdam (2016), the New York Film Festival (2015), the Rome Film Festival (2013), the Torino Film Festival (2011) and the FID in Marseille, where he won the Grand Prix of the international competition in 2015. In 2007 he co-founded the collective Blauer Hase, with which he curates the periodical publication ‘Paesaggio’ and the ‘Helicotrema’ festival.

The installation The Variational Status has been realized in collaboration with sculptor Franco Citterio, Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli (Milan), Carteles La Linterna Edigraphos (Cali), Herlyng Ferla, Paola Villani, Gonario Denti, Franco Maritato, Ruggero Mameli and Progetto MUSE (Sardegna, Italy).

Collaboration about concept and production: Carolina Valencia

Exhibition coproduced with ar/ge kunst, Bolzano and CentraleFies, Dro.

Acknowledgements: Musée Saint-Remi, Reims, Manège, Scène Nationale, Reims, Champagne Sanger - Avize Viti Campus, Alberto Camerini, Anna Destefanis et Danila Domizi.

Œuvres de Francis Alÿs, Francis Cape, Plamen Dejanoff, Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, documentation céline duval, David Evrard, Patricio Gil Flood, Jeanne Gillard & Nicolas Rivet, Elsa Maillot, Jean-Charles Massera, Jean-Luc Moulène, Jean-Marie Perdrix, Julien Prévieux, Superflex, Koki Tanaka, ainsi que des documents provenant du Musée de l’Histoire vivante, Montreuil et des Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail, Roubaix

Fermeture estivale du 2 au 22 août 2017

Commissaire de l’exposition : Antoine Marchand

Les trois FRAC du Grand Est se réunissent cet été autour d'une thématique commune d'exposition : le travail sous toutes ses formes ! À Reims, le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne ouvre le cycle Le travail à l’œuvre avec une exposition de groupe intitulée « L'alternative », ou comment travailler autrement. Suivi par le 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine à Metz qui aborde, à travers son exposition collective « Ressources humaines », le travail dans sa dimension sociale, morale et invisible tout en guidant la réflexion jusqu'au cœur du milieu artistique. Le FRAC Alsace à Sélestat présente, quant à lui, une installation in situ de l'artiste Michael Beutler dans laquelle processus de création et technicité productive s'entremêlent.

Il apparaît aujourd’hui indispensable, au vu des mutations profondes qui se sont opérées ces dernières décennies, de questionner la notion même de travail, de s’interroger sur la place que cette activité a occupé et occupe dans notre quotidien. En effet, les différentes révolutions industrielles et numériques et les grands bouleversements économiques survenus récemment ont résolument modifié notre rapport au travail, et ont entraîné de profondes évolutions sociétales, remettant notamment en question les frontières et la hiérarchie entre le temps dévolu au travail et celui consacré au loisir.Ainsi, face à une idéologie dominante qui chercherait à imposer un modèle unique ne pouvant être remis en question, se sont déployées des initiatives – citoyennes, politiques, artistiques – qui tentent de faire émerger de nouveaux possibles, d’autres manières d’envisager le (non-) travail et l’organisation de nos sociétés.

L’exposition de groupe présentée au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, intitulée L’alternative, s’intéresse à la manière dont se sont développés, au fil du temps, ces modes de production alternatifs, parallèles, en marge des courants dominants et en réaction à des structures et organisations du travail potentiellement aliénantes. Qu’ils s’inspirent de modèles éprouvés, témoignent de moments ou situations symboliques et potentiellement charnières, s’infiltrent dans les rouages de cette idéologie dominante qu’est le capitalisme ou en proposent des formes alternatives, les artistes réunis dans cette exposition tentent, chacun à leur manière, d’interroger notre rapport au travail et d’en reconsidérer les fondements, dans des contextes socio-économiques particulièrement sensibles.

S’ils ne sont pas dans la revendication frontale, ces artistes cherchent tous, par leurs productions, à repenser – plus que renverser – l’ordre établi. Certaines des propositions réunies au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne peuvent au premier abord sembler dérisoires, vaines, utopiques, voire irréalisables, mais toutes invitent à une réflexion nécessaire sur un modèle qui paraît aujourd’hui à bout de souffle, défaillant, et dont il convient de se détacher. Sans tendre à l’exhaustivité, cette exposition, via les différentes initiatives rassemblées ici – historiques ou plus contemporaines, personnelles ou collectives – se veut ainsi un laboratoire, un lieu d’échange et de réflexion qui permette d’ouvrir le dialogue sur de possibles nouveaux modèles d’organisation de nos sociétés, tenant également compte d’expériences passées. Une prise de recul salutaire pour tenter d’inventer le monde de demain, à l’aune de moments et réalisations emblématiques – des utopies de la fin du 19ème siècle aux tentatives plus récentes liées à la décroissance, notamment.

Outre les différentes œuvres des artistes invités, l’exposition réunira également des documents d’archive provenant du Musée de l’Histoire vivante de Montreuil et des Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail à Roubaix.

Remerciements : Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Lyon, Collection Institut d'art contemporain, Rhône-Alpes, FRAC Bretagne, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'art moderne - Centre de création industrielle, Champagne Sanger / Avize Viti Campus, Avize

- Visites guidées pour tous : les dimanches à 16h00
- Visite pour les enseignants : mercredi 31 mai 2017 à 14h30
- Visite guidée en LSF : samedi 10 juin 2017 à 14h30
- Visites guidées pour les groupes : sur réservation au 03 26 05 78 32
- Ateliers de pratique artistique pour les enfants de 6 à 12 ans : les samedis de 10h00 à 12h00 (ateliers familles les 20 mai et 16 septembre 2017) sur réservation au 03 26 05 78 32
- Visite croisée avec l'exposition Mémoires de l'industrie en Champagne-Ardenne à la Bibliothèque Carnegie : samedi 3 juin 2017 à 14h30 (rendez-vous à la Bibliothèque Carnegie)
- Visite-apéro avec Cyril Bonnet-Ponson, vigneron à Chamery, en partenariat avec le bar à vin Les 3 P'tits Bouchons : Mardi 1er juin 2017 à 18h30, sur réservation au 03 26 05 78 32
- Nuit Européenne des Musées : samedi 20 mai 2017 de 20h00 à 23h00
- Journées Européennes du Patrimoine : samedi 16 et dimanche 17 septembre 2017 de 14h00 à 18h00

Entrée libre, accessible à tous

Opening on January 26th from 6 pm

Curator : Antoine Marchand

Caroline Achaintre works across a diverse range of media that includes textiles, ceramics, woodcuts and watercolours, using techniques typically associated with the applied arts. Her sculptures, wall hangings, drawings and paintings are colourful and potent, evoking the subversive spirit of European carnival, and creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously playful and absurd. Citing German Expressionism,     post-war British sculpture and Primitivism as influences, there are also references to more contemporary sub-cultural strands of sci-fi, the   Goth-metal scene, psychedelia and horror films.

Drawing is the foundation of Achaintre’s practice. Working with watercolor, ink, woodcuts and linocuts, her drawings oscillate between the abstract and the figurative, showing colored and murky compositions that recall the shape of a face, like a series of ghostly portraits. Recent works use latex and wax to mask out rose-pink and pistachio-green harlequin patterns, over which inky ice-cream coloured spectres seem to float.

Achaintre’s sketches also continue to underpin her textile and ceramic works. Often taking the form of playful ceramic masks, the artist’s sculptures are made from fired and glazed paper clay, where the material is folded and refolded to create delicate structures. The process of making is spontaneous, often a quick gesture of gathering the clay so it warps. The ceramic masks bear crude facial expressions or grimaces, evoking the primitive and the carnivalesque.

Interested in the dialogue between an object and its display, Achaintre explores this in her installations by assembling her ceramic sculptures on custom-made modular structures. The artist has compared her installations to an ethnological museum displays in which objects are displaced from their function and place of origin, and brought into a contemporary context.

Achaintre’s richly coloured textile wall hangings are made by hand-tufting wool into a widely woven canvas base, a labor-intensive process which she likens to painting with wool. The artist uses a tufting gun to shoot woolen thread through canvas. The length, texture and color of each thread takes on the qualities of an expressionist painting. Achaintre likens the process of making these works to ‘painting with wool’.

The FRAC Champagne-Ardenne exhibition will explore the breath of Achaintre’s practice, comprising a selection of work from the last decade together with work made especially for the exhibition including a large-scale textile work, ceramic sculptures and a body of new drawings.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the artist’s first monograph with scholarly texts by Anne Dressen, Curator at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Zoë Gray, Senior Curator at WIELS, Brussels, as well as an interview between the artist and Emma Dean, Curator at BALTIC.

Caroline Achaintre (born Toulouse, 1969) spent her formative years in Germany studying Fine Art at Kunsthochschule in Halle/Saale (1996-98), with her postgraduate Studies in Fine Art and Combined Media at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London (1998-2000) and a MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London (2001-03). She trained as a blacksmith before coming to London, where she now lives and works. Caroline Achaintre is represented by Arcade, London.
Recent exhibitions include: Present/Future Illy Art Prize, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (2014); BP Spotlight at Tate Britain, London (2014); Camp Coo, University of Hertfordshire Galleries and Smith Row, Hertfordshire and Bury St. Edmunds (2013); DEEDIE, The Showroom, London (2005); Quarters, Whitechapel Project Space (2004).  In 2014, Achaintre was artist in residence at Camden Arts Centre (and Japan in 2015).  She is currently showing work in the British Art Show 8, organized by Hayward Touring.

Exhibition organised by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

Caroline Achaintre’s exhibition has received support from Fluxus, A Franco-British Programme for Contemporary Art.