Du 15 décembre 2022 au 30 avril 2023
Vernissage le 14 décembre à 18h

Avec : GRAU, Bernhard Martin, Neue Gestaltung

Directeur artistique : Saâdane Afif
Commissaire de l’exposition : Yasmine d’O.

« Lorsque le sage montre la lune, l’imbécile regarde le doigt » – le Bonimenteur est celui qui réussit à vous faire croire que le doigt est la lune.

Du 15 décembre 2022 au 30 avril 2023, le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne accueillera The Bonimenteur, une exposition qui, à travers les œuvres de trois artistes et collectifs, dresse le portrait de ce curieux personnage. Sous les traits d’une installation monumentale et lumineuse des designers GRAU, d’un ensemble de peintures et dessins de l’artiste Bernhard Martin et d’une composition graphique et interactive du collectif de graphistes Neue Gestaltung, The Bonimenteur prend forme au FRAC et invite le public à sa rencontre.

Le professeur, le bonimenteur, le cyclomotoriste, la diseuse de bonne aventure, un acrobate, le charbonnier et le touriste forment les sept personnages de L’Heptaèdre, une pièce de théâtre écrite par l’écrivain Thomas Clerc, à la demande de l’artiste Saâdane Afif et dans laquelle Yasmine d’O, se lance à la recherche d’une forme géométrique mystérieuse : un volume à sept faces, un heptaèdre. Elle rencontre au cours de sa quête sept personnages intrigants, devenus à l’occasion de la manifestation internationale Bergen Assembly en Norvège (8 septembre – 6 novembre 2022), le motif de sept expositions.

Intitulée Yasmine d’O. et les sept faces de l’Heptaèdre, cette 4ème édition de la triennale a été conçue par Saâdane Afif qui a nommé Yasmine d’O. en qualité de curatrice. La Bergen Assembly a ainsi investi sept lieux et institutions permettant au public de suivre la quête de Yasmine d’O et à cette dernière de poursuivre sa recherche de l’heptaèdre. En accueillant The Bonimenteur, le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne devient la première institution à réactiver un personnage-exposition et à accompagner Saâdane Afif, artiste historique de sa collection (1) et Yasmine d’O. dans cette étrange aventure…

(1) : La première exposition personnelle de l’artiste Saâdane Afif en France a eu lieu au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne en 2001. Le FRAC compte dans sa collection six œuvres de l’artiste.

Autour de l'exposition 

Saâdane Afif, A la rencontre du bonimenteur
Conférence
Mardi 24 janvier à 18h30, à Sciences Po
Plus d’infos

Garance Grand-Léger, Autour de moi il n’y a que de la roche, elle est plus lourde que nous
Performance en continu
Samedi 4 février de 14h à 18h
Dans le cadre de FARaway – Festival des arts à Reims
Plus d’infos

Romain Gandolphe, A kind of tree
Performance
Samedi 18 mars à 15h30
Plus d’infos

Vernissage le 23 juin 2022, à 18h00

Avec : Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Saâdane Afif, Ouassila Arras, Alex Ayed, Sophie Barber, Orian Barki et Meriem Bennani, Étienne Chambaud, Gaëlle Choisne, Rabiya Choudhry, Julien Creuzet, Freya Dooley, David Douard, Charlotte Dualé, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Florence Jung, LOW PROFILE, Randa Maroufi, Juliette Mock, Nicolas Momeim, Joanna Piotrowska, Sara Sadik, Rosalie Schweiker, Agnès Thurnauer, Julia Wachtel

Commissaire de l’exposition : Marie Griffay, directrice du FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

Membres du Comité technique d’achat :
- Ludovic Delalande, Commissaire d'exposition, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
- Sébastien Delot, Directeur-Conservateur au LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq
- Marie Griffay, Directrice, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
- Kevin Hunt, Artiste, commissaire d'exposition et professeur, Liverpool
- Sarah McCrory, Directrice, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London

Quelle histoire peut nous raconter une collection d’art qui rassemble différentes œuvres de plusieurs artistes ? Comment, par qui et pour qui cette collection existe-t-elle ? Sur quelle histoire nous renseigne-t-elle ? Celle de l’époque, de l’art, de l’œuvre, de l’artiste ? Qui raconte cette histoire ? Rassembler ici et maintenant des œuvres de la collection du FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, dont le seul point commun est a priori leurs années d’acquisition, est un pari. Vont-elles dialoguer, résonner les unes avec les autres ou au contraire entrer en dissonance ?

Ce qui est certain c’est que le territoire inconnu, né de leur mise en présence, n’existera qu’une fois, le temps de l’exposition. Arpenter cette géographie sensible permet de prendre du recul, de regarder en arrière et de mettre en perspective une sélection de quatre ans d’acquisition. Laisser toute la place à l’impression, suivre l’intuition d’un lien, écouter les silences et les espaces vides entre les œuvres c’est rendre possible la construction d’un récit libre. Car il existe un lien, bien qu’invisible, entre elles : le travail de cinq personnalités d’horizons différents, réunies pour quatre ans, de 2018 à 2021 avec pour mission d’enrichir la collection du FRAC.

Les œuvres soumises chaque année à ce groupe, appelé Comité technique d’achat, sont soit spontanément envoyées par l’artiste ou sa galerie, soit présentées par l’une ou l’un des membres de ce comité. Elles sont discutées, débattues, confrontées à l’histoire de l’art et à celle de la collection. Ce fonds, créé en 1984, a pour ambition de construire pour les habitant·es de Champagne-Ardenne et au-delà, une collection d’art à diffuser, un patrimoine à partager, des histoires à raconter.

La pratique de la collection ne nous est pas étrangère. Il faut cependant aller chercher loin dans notre mémoire le souvenir de gestes autrefois si importants et aujourd’hui oubliés pour la plupart d’entre nous. Chercher, récolter, trouver, étudier, classer, admirer… un caillou, un coquillage, un timbre, un pin’s, une image… Cette exposition nous permet de découvrir pour la première fois, une nouvelle partie de la collection du FRAC, autrement dit un trésor qui nous appartient à toutes et à tous.

Essayons alors d’emprunter à l’enfant son regard de curiosité et d’ingéniosité sur le monde et de « voir pour de vrai ce que nous avons sous les yeux » (1). Découvrons avec jubilation les œuvres et laissons-les nous conter des aventures extraordinaires. Rappelons-nous un instant l’incroyable découverte qui fût la nôtre lorsque, bébé, nous découvrions en observant une image fixe dans un livre, un dessin, une peinture, que « quelque chose qui devrait bouger est immobilisé, quelque chose dont on connaît l’épaisseur est aplati, quelque chose de grand est miniaturisé » (1).

L’artiste, écrivaine et illustratrice Elzbieta, raconte dans Le langage des contes ce moment fulgurant et joyeux qu’est le décodage du langage de l’image pour un bébé de six mois : « Tout de ses gestes, de sa jubilation, de son excitation intellectuelle, montrait qu’il en comprenait la stupéfiante magie : où avait disparu l’ensemble des propriétés de ce qui fait un chat, sa taille, son épaisseur, ses mouvements, sa fourrure ? Et pourtant, malgré ces manques essentiels, dans ce minuscule résidu plat auquel on ne pouvait ni tirer la queue ni donner à manger, chat il y avait bel et bien ! » (1).

Ici, le temps de l’exposition, le mouvement du monde est arrêté pour nous. Écoutons entre les œuvres les tendres chuchotements, les bribes de récit qu’il nous suffit d’attraper en vol pour construire une histoire suffisamment puissante pour nous émerveiller, nous transporter, nous émouvoir.

(1) : Elzbieta, Le Langage des contes, éditions du Rouergue, Paris, 2014, p. 17, 21, 23.

Featuring over 40 artists around the figure of René Daumal: Ellie Antoniou, Béatrice Balcou, Rosa Barba, Hélène Bellenger, Simone Boisecq, Gaëlle Choisne, Clément Cogitore, Guillaume Constantin, Eric Croes, René Daumal, Simon Demeuter, Quentin Derouet, Kim Détraux, Luc Dietrich, Julien Discrit, Jimmie Durham, Anne Goujaud, Nancy Graves, Raymond Hains, Artür Harfaux, Manon Harrois, Charles Hascoët, Maurice Henry, Tom Ireland, Florence Jung, Kapwani Kiwanga, Laura Lamiel, Charles Lopez, Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Bibi Manavi, Laurent Montaron, Otobong Nkanga, Philippe Parreno, David Posth-Kohler, David Renaud, Karine Rougier, Joseph Sima, Patti Smith + Soundwalk Collective, Stéphanie Solinas, Julien Tiberi, Trevor Yeung

Exhibition curators: Boris Bergmann, author, and Marie Griffay, Director of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

This September, the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne inaugurates a large collective exhibition devoted to Mount Analogue, a novel by author René Daumal (1908-1944). Combining art and literature, the exhibition celebrates Daumal’s influence, in particular the impact of his last book, Mount Analogue, on the artists of his day and beyond.

Imagined as an expedition, the exhibition explores some of the book’s major themes: a poetic community, individual and collective faith, and elevation towards an interior and secret summit. Carried by Daumal’s writing and personal interpretations by the participating artists, the exhibition invites us to find within ourselves the means to accessing Mount Analogue.

Mount Analogue is a magical book that accompanies and guides the existence of all those who simply by reading it, take part in Daumal’s quest. The initiatory narrative tells us that there is a geographical passageway between Earth and Sky, and between our certainties and hesitations: a gigantic mountain that is at once accessible but hidden. This is Mount Analogue. The rule is simple: in order to be able to see it, one must first believe.

For Boris Bergmann, co-curator of the exhibition: “Mount Analogue is not only an important literary text. It has served as a reference for several generations of artists, including the poet and singer Patti Smith, and visual artist and filmmaker Philippe Parreno, as well as a whole generation of younger artists from all around the world.  Painters, musicians, sculptors and filmmakers: all have read and enjoyed Mount Analogue, and all have used it as a source of inspiration. A secret passage towards creation. An assembly point. A compass that reveals other ‘Norths’. It was simply a question of gathering them together. It was in Reims that the teenage Daumal founded a highly radical literary group. The literary review Le Grand Jeu was the genesis of Daumal, and Mount Analogue his apogee. In both cases, the quest for liberty is experienced via an inner, poetic experience, through the establishment of a community.”

As René Daumal himself wrote: “the very fact that there are now two of us changes everything. The task doesn’t become twice as easy: after having been impossible, it has become possible.” (1)

According to Marie Griffay, co-curator of the exhibition: “To imagine this exhibition-expedition, we carried out our research concentrically in artist’s studios, archives, catalogues, and collections, with the intuition that the works presented in Reims should come from our direct entourage, from the literary and artistic starting point that was Daumal. Therefore, we brought together some one hundred artworks, created by approximately forty artists, with the idea of constructing an exhibition that explored humans’ capacity to join forces to create together.”

Alongside known and established artists like Patti Smith, who is presenting videos produced with the Soundwalk Collective taken from their latest album, Peradam, directly inspired by Daumal, or Philippe Parreno, whose work Mont Analogue transcribes Daumal’s text in luminous and rhythmic pulsations, may be found a whole generation of younger artists, who continue to read and appreciate Daumal. The FRAC has invited them to produce work especially for the occasion. Therefore, we have on display new paintings by Karine Rougier and Simon Demeuter, new ceramic totems by Eric Croes, as well as reactivated pieces by Charles Lopez, Florence Jung, Quentin Derouet and Hélène Bellenger.

The works of modern artists may also be seen alongside these new productions thanks to a number of exceptional loans from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims, the Bibliothèque Carnegie and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris allowing visitors to rediscover the works of Simone Boisecq, René Daumal, Luc Dietrich, Artür Harfaux, Maurice Henry and Joseph Sima in an unprecedented proximity. Works from the FRAC Collection further complete the visions of Mount Analogue, including pieces by Rosa Barba, Gaëlle Choisne, Jimmie Durham, Anne Goujaud, Raymond Hains, Manon Harrois, Tom Ireland, David Posth-Kohler and David Renaud.

This renewed quest to attain Mount Analogue benefits from numerous loans from artists, galleries and others FRACs and institutions, thereby enabling the public to discover the work of Ellie Antoniou, Béatrice Balcou, Clément Cogitore, Guillaume Constantin, Kim Détraux, Julien Discrit, Nancy Graves, Charles Hascoët, Kapwani Kiwanga, Laura Lamiel, Marie Lund & Nina Beier, Bibi Manavi, Laurent Montaron, Otobong Nkanga, Stéphanie Solinas, Julien Tiberi and Trevor Yeung.

Constructed around Daumal’s aura and the highly personal interpretation of his writing by each of the invited artists, the exhibition has a single goal: to allow us to go beyond ourselves in our attempt to reach Mount Analogue, this possible that allows us to see everything, create everything. Be everything.

1 : René Daumal, Mount Analogue: An Authentic Narrative. Translation by Roger Shattuck. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959.

May 19th 2021 - August 22nd, 2021

Curated by: Bettina Moriceau Maillard, Director of the association Les Amis de Cathy Josefowitz and Marie Griffay, Director of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

The FRAC Champagne-Ardenne is pleased to present the first institutional exhibition in France of Swiss artist Cathy Josefowitz (1956, New York - 2014, Geneva) and English artist Susie Green (b. 1979). Empty rooms full of love orchestrates the unprecedented encounter between two bodies of work that share an affinity of medium— painting, drawing, collage, performance, music— both exploring themes such as otherness and disguise. In both works, the use of theatrical devices is part of questioning relationship to the body, itself engaged in the intimate journey of quest for self. This crossing of paths highlights two powerful and sensitive approaches focusing on the emancipation of the body through the gaze of two generations of female artists.

The first part of the exhibition, inhabited by characters dressed up, amplified and decorated by the artists and standing for avatars of themselves, plunge the viewer at the heart of a game of gazes. It takes the form of a theatre stage where acrobats, puppets and figures inspired by commedia dell’ arte characters, dance, run and slide along the floor. While the register is happy, certain characters convey a sense of melancholy: “The aim is to free oneself, thanks to a simple game of appearances that one plays or goes along with, thereby allowing a hidden or bridled part of the self to be expressed.” (1)

In the second part of the exhibition, the physical relationship is lived as a spiritual experience that allows to find oneself. A shift thus occurs, a transformation of the being, which can be seen in the work of both artists. Cathy Josefowitz’ s paintings and notebooks on the Kamasutra and the erotic paintings and drawings by Susie Green give way to an abstract form of representation. In Green’s work the bodies have evaporated, transformed into energy through sexual encounter, while Cathy Josefowitz’s colored skies depict the metamorphosis of thoughts into emotions. The end of this second chapter takes us into ecstasy with a hypnotic video installation co-authored by Kim Coleman and Susie Green.

Empty rooms full of love is an invitation to allow oneself to be permeated with the female gaze, that which describes a feminine experience of the world and that everyone can identify with. What does it mean to inhabit a woman’s body, to experience it and go beyond it? Do the empty rooms full of love refer to interior spaces, to women’s bodies, or to the museum space? Is the one that fill it with love, the person who enters this space or the one that it belongs to?

The exhibition features works co-authored by Cathy Josefowitz and Susie Green with: Simon Bayliss, Claire Bushe, Kim Coleman, Romain Denis, Cathy Frost, Lisa Halse, Tess McDermott, Rory Pilgrim and Mara de Witt.

This exhibition has benefited from the support of Fluxus Art Projects

(1) Marguerite Yourcenar on Roger Caillois’s theory of play: “L’homme qui aimait les pierres” in En pèlerin et en étranger. Essais, Paris: Gallimard, 1989

Exhibition curator: Marie Griffay

American painter of international renown, Stephen Felton (born in 1975, Buffalo) has been invited to produce a new series of monumental canvases for his monographic exhibition

Teeth in the Grass at the FRAC, from 17 june to 25 october 2020.

Done freehand, Stephen Felton’s paintings are made from very simple geometric forms that question the medium and the foundations of mimetic representation in art. He develops an alphabet of signs similar to pictograms, a playful universal language that evokes both the imagery of childhood and cave art, with its rare depictions of the human figure. The search for a balance between the foreground and the background, the subject and the landscape, colour and white is at the heart of the artist’s work. Stephen Felton’s spontaneous, quasi-performative gesture resembles that of an amateur, contradicting the classical notion of skill and technique, as well as the romantic representation of the artist endowed with an exceptional talent, working tirelessly to perfect their art.  

Stephen Felton’s work finds its origin or inspiration in a multitude of narratives; one simply needs to tell the stories. “Most of the time”, he claims, “I think about something I’d like to play with and I go in that direction”. Over the course of his various shows, the public will have recognized the figure of Moby Dick from Herman Melville’s novel (1851) or elements from Scenes from the Life of a Faun (Arno Schmidt, 1962) : a bike, a ladder, or a crescent moon.

For his exhibition at the FRAC, Stephen Felton makes use of the two floors of the former Jesuit College to tell a love story in two acts. This story not only evokes major literary works but their multiple contemporary adaptations. Indeed, it is essentially the idea of the “remake” that interests Stephen Felton.

Every year, in collaboration with the FRAC Alsace and 49 Nord 6 Est-FRAC Lorraine, the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne invites three artists, with ties to the region, to present a film as part of the Video Club and to coincide with an exhibition.

For this second edition, artists Mali Arun, Marie Bouthier & Anouck Lemarquis (Demi Tour de France) and Thomas Schmahl will explore the respectful and romantic, conflictual and destructive relationship that exists between humans and the landscape.  

In Paradisus, Mali Arun depicts a shimmering, fertile environment, a black and white Eden, where the threat of a deluge seems to herald the end of insouciance. Thomas Schmahl delivers a contemplative fable with Les Montagnes Amoureuses where a sensitive observation of nature reveals a romantic force. Finally, Le Film des Vacances by artistic duo Demi Tour de France, in collaboration with Arthur Clerbois, takes us on a road trip (by car), discovering French landscapes in a state of perpetual change, between the sublimation of everyday life and a chimerical epic.

In an era marked by the profound alteration of ecosystems, these films encourage reflection on behalf of viewers: is it still possible today to contemplate a virgin landscape, devoid of human footprints? More poetically, the three varying landscapes, which range from a park in Croatia to hiking trails in the Alps, via the byroads of France, make this edition of the Video Club an invitation to travel.

Mali Arun was born in 1987.  A student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Tianjin (China) and Brussels (La Cambre), she obtained the Grand Jury Prize at the Salon de Montrouge in 2018. She lives and works in Strasbourg.

The artistic duo known as “Demi Tour de France” is made up of Marie Bouthier, (b. 1983) and Anouck Lemarquis (b. 1982). Both live and work in France. Their work was presented in the exhibition Paysages français: une aventure photographique 1984 -2017 at the BnF in 2018 and at the Under Construction gallery, Paris in 2020.

Thomas Schmahl was born in 1994. A graduate of ESAD Reims in 2018, he was the prizewinner of the Young Creation Award at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain Mulhouse in 2019. He lives and works in Reims.

Opening Friday 11 October, 6pm

Exhibition curator: Marie Griffay


With the support of Mondriaan Fonds and the Dutch Embassy

Spreading Elegance, the first monographic exhibition of Chinese-Dutch artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang in France, will be held at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne.

With references to both social networks and great literature, Evelyn Taocheng Wang questions the notion of identity as a moving concept, intrinsically linked to space and time.  Although Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s work is made up of contradictions,—between its use of traditional and modern techniques, individual narrative and collective memory, and in its fusion of Eastern and Western references,—it nevertheless sketches the contours of a slightly less binary reality which participate in the free flow of imagination.

Spreading Elegance[1] is a new and ambitious installation that questions body representation and social images. In it, Evelyn Taocheng Wang uses her own clothes to dress her friends, making them the models of an imaginary fashion show. Excerpts from their epistolary exchanges find their way into rice-paper drawings by the artist, where she disconcertingly mirrors the writing of the authors.

Especially designed for the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, this new show also features three works by Franco-Japanese painter Léonard Foujita (1886-1968), an icon of modernity and closely linked to the city of Reims. This is an encounter of sorts between two artists who in their respective work freely explore the classical representations of male and female bodies in Western art. Elegance, like confusion, spreads.  

The exhibition also allows visitors to discover Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s video work through three recent films that showcase the body, clothing and architecture. In Dusk, acquired in 2018 by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Evelyn Taocheng Wang revisits the atmosphere and composition of classical Dutch painting. 

The films Three Versions of Change and Hospital Conversation—in direct resonance with the history of the FRAC building, a former Jesuit college used as a hospital for almost two centuries—present anonymous bodies, transformed by the process of pain and healing.

EVELYN TAOCHENG WANG

Born in 1981 in Chengdu, China. Lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
She studied painting in China and continued her education at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt. From 2012 to 2014, Evelyn Taocheng Wang attended De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has exhibited her work at the ICA (London, 2017), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2018), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, 2019), and at Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2019), where she was awarded the Dolf Henkes Prize. Her performances have been presented at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2015) and Documenta14 (Cassel, 2017). Her next performance will take place at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne on 9 February 2020 as part of the FAR away festival.

À l’occasion des Journées européennes du patrimoine et des 50 ans de la mission Apollo XI, pendant laquelle Neil Armstrong et Buzz Aldrin ont marché sur la lune, le FRAC présente exceptionnellement une exposition monographique de l’artiste Tom Ireland, visible le temps d’un    week-end.

L’œuvre de Tom Ireland joue avec les notions d’espace, de distance et avec tous les éléments qui les composent. Il s’intéresse à la nature matérielle et immatérielle de ces éléments, et cherche à comprendre comment ils influent sur notre connaissance individuelle et collective.

Deux œuvres de la collection du FRAC, acquises en 2018, sont présentées. La première, 2:36:41 (Every day we are apart I miss you more than ever), est une œuvre sonore pour laquelle l’artiste a « étiré » la Sonate au clair de lune de Beethoven pour que celle-ci dure 2 heures, 36 minutes, 41 secondes, soit le temps exact passé par Neil Armstrong sur la lune en 1969. La seconde, A Meteorite is placed in the void between the ceiling and the stars, est un fragment de météorite placé dans le vide entre le plafond de l’espace d’exposition et les étoiles. Laissez-vous embarquer dans l’univers poétique et interstellaire de Tom Ireland qui vous fait découvrir le FRAC comme vous ne l’avez jamais vu…

With Franz Ackermann, Corentin Canesson, Melissa Dubbin  & Aaron S. Davidson, Jennifer Douzenel, Mar García Albert, Hippolyte Hentgen, Robert Malaval, Nicolas Momein, François Petit, Laure Prouvost, Clément Rodzielski, Lilli Thiessen, Julia Wachtel, Lois Weinberger.

Curator: Marie Griffay

Exhibition: 17 May - 15 September 2019
Opening: 16 May at 6 pm

The FRAC Champagne-Ardenne collection includes a group of remarkable paintings that shed light on high-quality individual practices without going back over the whole history of the medium. “Été pourri peinture fraîche” (Rotten Summer, Wet Paint) is the title of a series of drawings by Robert Malaval (from the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne Collection), whose work endlessly mixed rock, pop esthetic, the end of the world, the festive and the tragic, thus playing a significant part in opening up art practices generally. Painting, sculpture, performance, and music were entwined in Malaval’s art; his output has inspired many other artists since. The show is a discreet homage to this all-in outré commitment, bringing together artists whose own approaches throw off the burden of a history of painting that goes back millennia and embrace the freedom to reinvent and redirect the medium and imagine new rules.

Julia Wachtel, Hippolyte Hentgen, Lilli Thiessen, and Mar García Albert stand back from the classic subjects and paint images; Laure Prouvost, Clément Rodzielski, and Nicolas Momein prefer not to choose between painting and sculpture but rather mix the two genres; Franz Ackermann and François Petit borrow from other sources and create flamboyant paintings; Lois Weinberger has given up designing the composition of his work and entrusts the process to insects in his stead; Corentin Canesson follows a protocol in producing figurative paintings measuring one square meter; Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson imagine the posthuman future of painting, producing the anthropometry of a robot; and finally Jennifer Douzenel, making films the way others paint, closes out the exhibition with a pictorial video.

Wet paint, freed painting.

AVEC : OUASSILA ARRAS, CAMILLE BESSON, RAPHAËL ROSSI, MAXIME TESTU, VICTOR VAYSSE

EXPOSITION DU 24 JANVIER AU 21 AVRIL 2019
VERNISSAGE LE MERCREDI 23 JANVIER 2019 A PARTIR DE 18h30
EN PRESENCE DES ARTISTES

Commissaire de l’exposition : Marie Griffay

Plein Jeu revient pour une deuxième saison sous la forme d’une exposition – toujours consacrée aux artistes émergents – et d’un programme culturel pensé en lien avec les œuvres des artistes exposés – performances, ateliers, conférences, rencontres,…- .

« Avec Plein Jeu #1, la première exposition que j’ai programmée au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, l’idée était d’envoyer tout de suite un message simple : le FRAC est ouvert aux artistes émergents. Le titre même de cette nouvelle série place notre institution sous le sceau du ludique et l’ouvre à toutes les règles et forces qui régissent le jeu : la distraction, l’oubli, l’équité, le faire ensemble.
Faire ensemble, construire ensemble, jouer ensemble. C’est ainsi que s’est déroulé Plein Jeu #1 : neuf artistes qui se connaissaient (au rez-de-chaussée du FRAC) ou ne se connaissaient pas (au 1^er étage), ont été invités en résidence pendant le montage de l’exposition pour construire / déconstruire ensemble une œuvre commune / individuelle, sous les yeux et les oreilles d’un dixième artiste, Rémy Drouard, invité à réaliser une œuvre sonore à partir de ses observations de ce processus.

Pour Plein Jeu #2, la case départ est ici, à Reims. La règle du jeu est maintenant d’exposer des artistes issus de l'École supérieure d'art et de design de Reims. Une fois la règle énoncée, rien n’est dit ! Puisqu’il s’agit de découvrir – au-delà de ce commun – cinq artistes, cinq individualités, cinq démarches (1).

L’intégralité du rez-de-chaussée est consacrée à une jeune artiste, diplômée de l’ESAD de Reims en 2018, Ouassila Arras. Le principe est de ne pas cloisonner l’espace, de ne pas imposer de présentation collective sous prétexte de la jeunesse de l’artiste. Ouassila Arras développe depuis plusieurs années une pratique de la sculpture monumentale et de l’installation qui nécessite de se déployer dans un grand espace pour pleinement s’épanouir et offrir aux visiteurs la possibilité d’arpenter ses constructions précaires et poétiques. Offrir à une jeune diplômée une première présentation monographique est une façon de la confronter à l’espace, sans borne ni limite, aux possibilités et aux difficultés que représente cette proposition.

A l’étage, nous invitons quatre artistes travaillant dans l’atelier Le Marquis : Camille Besson, Raphaël Rossi, Maxime Testu et Victor Vaysse. En 2016, sept artistes créent cet atelier partagé à L’Île-Saint-Denis et l’inaugurent en organisant une exposition de leurs œuvres dans ce lieu. Suit une autre exposition à plusieurs à La Cappela (Paris, 2017), puis une nouvelle au Cœur (Paris, 2018), et enfin une autre à FDP (Paris, 2018) (2). Parallèlement, Raphaël Rossi et Maxime Testu fondent avec deux designers et écrivains Romaine, une revue en ligne pour faire circuler de courts textes écrits en parallèle, en périphérie de leur pratique plastique. Tous ces événements sont conçus et mis en œuvre par les artistes eux-mêmes ou par d’autres artistes. Ce type de pratique remet en question le rôle de l’institution dans la promotion et la diffusion des œuvres des jeunes artistes. La mise en commun, les projets collaboratifs, l’autodiffusion apparaissent de plus en plus comme une stratégie  permettant aux artistes émergents de s’émanciper et de créer leurs propres réseaux, de s’adresser plus directement au public. Les expositions en institution, inspirées par ces collaborations à géométrie variable, figent donc un instant le « groupe » dont les contours sont pourtant mouvants ; comme ce fût le cas à l’occasion de leur participation au Vingtième Prix de la Fondation d'entreprise Ricard (Paris, 2018). Pour l’invitation au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Camille Besson, Raphaël Rossi, Maxime Testu et Victor Vaysse décident de faire ensemble une exposition dans l’exposition dont le titre/sous-titre, Au bord de l’âge adulte, décrit ce moment d’indécision et de flou. » 
Marie Griffay

(1) - Pssst : entre nous, l’un d’entre eux n’est même jamais allé à l’École supérieure d'art et de design de Reims ! Mais lequel ?

(2) - Exposition présentant seulement Camille Besson, Raphaël Rossi, Maxime Testu et Victor Vaysse.

JOUEZ AVEC NOUS !

Postez votre meilleure photo de l’exposition sur Instagram, accompagnée du hashtag #fracchampagneardenne entre le 23 janvier et le 21 avril 2019 ; le gagnant remportera le 1er numéro du magazine CARF !

AVEC : ANNABELLE AMOROS, ZOE COSSON, MARINA SMORODINOVA

DU 24 JANVIER AU 21 AVRIL 2019
VERNISSAGE LE MERCREDI 23 JANVIER 2019 A PARTIR DE 18h30
EN PRESENCE DES ARTISTES

En 2019, le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne modifie entièrement son parcours de visite pour consacrer l’une de ses salles à la présentation permanente d’art vidéo. Ce Vidéo Club est le premier d’une série de rendez-vous, conçus en collaboration avec le FRAC Alsace et le 49 Nord 6 Est – FRAC Lorraine, entièrement dédiés aux artistes liés au territoire du Grand Est.
Les trois films sélectionnés pour ce premier Vidéo Club ont en commun de montrer, chacun à leur manière, une expérience du temps qui passe.
Dans son film Area 51, Nevada, USA, Annabelle Amoros construit un récit autour de cette mystérieuse zone militaire liée, pour certains, aux extra-terrestres. Qu’attendent les habitants vivant à proximité de cette zone ? Un appel ? La venue d’un OVNI ?
L’attente est également au cœur du film de Zoé Cosson qui réalise un montage de coupures de magazines de décoration et d’archives vidéo pour plonger le spectateur au cœur d’une Salle d’attente générique. Zoé Cosson illustre l’aspect impersonnel de ce non-lieu et l’influence qu’il exerce sur ses « usagers », des patients dont l’issue de l’attente semble moins importante que l’attente elle-même.
La Piscine de Marina Smorodinova est un prétexte à la flânerie et à la rencontre. C’est un lieu où des corps se croisent, échangent ou préfèrent s’isoler dans un temps qui semble suspendu. C’est un microcosme ou les règles sociales apparaissent en filigrane, ou la solitude se heurte à la foule.

JOUEZ AVEC NOUS !

Postez votre meilleure photo de l’exposition sur Instagram, accompagnée du hashtag #fracchampagneardenne entre le 23 janvier et le 21 avril 2019 ; le gagnant remportera le 1er numéro du magazine CARF !

> pour écouter les pièces sonores de Rémy Drouard : Cliquez-ici


AVEC LES ŒUVRES DE TOM CASTINEL, GAËLLE CHOISNE, RÉMY DROUARD, MANON HARROIS, ANTONIN HORQUIN, LAURA PORTER, DAVID POSTH-KOHLER, PABLO  RÉOL, OCTAVE  RIMBERT-RIVIÈRE ET MÜKERREM TUNCAY

VERNISSAGE LE MERCREDI 14  FÉVRIER 2018 À 18H00, EN PRÉSENCE DES ARTISTES

Commissaire de l’exposition : Marie Griffay

Dix jeunes artistes sont invités en résidence pendant le montage de l’exposition pour construire/déconstruire ensemble une œuvre commune/individuelle. À eux de jouer !

Plein jeu #1 est la première exposition d’une série, consacrée à la scène artistique émergente. Le premier opus de cette manifestation est dédié à la collaboration, à la co-création et aux collectifs d’artistes à géométrie variable. Dix artistes sont invités à Reims en amont de l’exposition pour une « résidence-montage », pendant laquelle ils travaillent ensemble à la construction de l’exposition. L’hybridation est au cœur de leurs pratiques artistiques respectives ; les éléments qui composent leurs langages visuels sont sans cesse réutilisés dans de nouvelles installations. C’est cette pratique du « remix » permanent qui est ici mise en jeu. La confrontation de leurs œuvres, dans les espaces du FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, va-t-elle donner lieu à de nouvelles combinaisons ou à des ruptures ? Leurs « sculptures nomades » vont-elles entrer en résonance, interagir ou au contraire, affirmer leurs singularités?

PROGRAMMATION ARTISTIQUE ET CULTURELLE

- Visites guidées pour tous : les dimanches à 16h00
- Visites guidées pour les groupes : sur réservation au 03 26 05 78 32
- Ateliers de pratique artistique pour les enfants : les samedis de 10h00 à 12h00, sur réservation au 03 26 05 78 32

- Visite  guidée  pour  les  Amis  du  FRAC  Champagne-Ardenne: mardi 13 février 2018 à 19h00
- Visite pour les enseignants : mercredi 21 février 2018 à 14h30
- Week-end  art  contemporain  Grand  Est : vendredi 16,  samedi 17  et dimanche 18 mars 2018
- Visite guidée en LSF : samedi 24 mars 2018 à 14h30
- Week-End Télérama : samedi 24 et dimanche 25 mars 2018 de 14h00 à 18h00
- « Regards croisés », visite avec les trois directrices des trois FRAC du Grand Est : mercredi 4 avril à 18h30

JOUEZ AVEC NOUS !

Postez  votre  meilleure  photo  de  l’exposition  sur  Instagram, accompagnée  de  #fracchampagneardenne  entre  le  15  février  et  le  15 avril  2018,  le  gagnant remportera  un  catalogue,  un  tote  bag  et  un carnet du FRAC !

Entrée libre, accessible à tous.
Les activités culturelles proposées sont gratuites.

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.

Curator: Antoine Marchand

The FRAC will be closed from August 1st to August 23rd 2016

Nate Lowman has created both pictorial and sculptural pieces which are a testimony to the American society. His work involves mingling current events with cultural references to pop culture detritus, through collages, installations and painting. His creations are the result of a very particular technique which is actually similar to xerography printing. In the last few years, he has exploited images as well as everyday objects from disparate universes and eras in order to mingle cultural references without following any hierarchical logic. However, Nate Lowman’s work goes beyond copying and recycling styles used by Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol in their time, or more recently, Richard Prince. Nate Lowman’s main focus is storytelling. Among his heterogeneous compositions, no image takes priority over another; the relations between images create a potential storyboard. The artist is not trying to create a unique narrative structure as much as intertwining iconographic references that echo as a whole in this day and age. Neither innocent, or particularly ambiguous, Nate Lowman’s works are sometimes of a violent tone as well as being melancholic and pessimistic, while also reflecting irony and dark humor.

For his exhibition World of Interiors at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, which will be the first in a French public institution, Nate Lowman will present a selection of artworks which have never been seen before and were created for this occasion. These art pieces will also reveal the new direction he has taken in his work. As a matter of fact, the paintings on view here were created in response to the architecture of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne’s renovated building, all the while reflecting the place they were produced, in Nate Lowman’s art studio in Tribeca. Irony is a defining feature of Nate Lowman’s who had also considered balancing his exhibition between indoors and outdoors, creativity and recycling, as well as nature and culture.

Since his first monographic exhibition in 2005 at the Maccarone gallery in New York City (THE END. And Other American Pastimes), Nate Lowman’s (born in 1979 in Las Vegas; lives and works in New York) work was featured at the Museum of Modern Art, at the Solomon R. Guggenhheim Museum and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which are all located in New York, as well as in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo and in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi. He had solo shows at Midway Contempary Art in Minneapolis (Axis of Praxis, 2006), at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo (The Natriot Act, 2009), at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich (I Wanted to Be an Artist but all I got was this Lousy Career, 2012) and at Dallas Contemporary (America Sneezes, 2015). His art work was also featured in the 12^th Biennale de Lyon (Entretemps... Brusquement, et ensuite, 2013) as well as in the Empire State Exhibition (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 2013). Nate Lowman is represented by the Massimo De Carlo galleries in London, Milan and Hong-Kong as well as the Maccarone gallery in New York.

The Nate Lowman exhibition has received support from the gallery Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.

With support from Champagne Taittinger

Opening on Thursday, October 8, 2015 at 6 pm, in the presence of the artist

A Procession will go from the Reims Cathedral to the FRAC on Sunday, October 4, 2015 at 11 am

Curator: Florence Derieux

Lara Schnitger’s visual language consists of sculpture, clothing and performance in a hybrid space, with references to politics, womanhood, feminism, sexuality, but also street fashion or graffiti. Her work explores the intersections between academic arts and crafts traditions as well as urban practices that involve music, fashion, theater, performance.  Schnitger creates intense environments on the brink of collapse. In her free-standing volumetric forms, the artist applies a basic system of stretching an array of hosiery and fabrics over joined sticks of wood. The tensile force of the textile keeps the wooden framework firmly in place. A conversation between materials exists in the artist’s work, and it stimulates a relationship between membrane and structure, endowing the forms with human characteristics. It has been said that the instability of Schnitger's work comes from "its will to live, its wild over-extension and daring stance."

For her first solo exhibition in France, Lara Schnitger presents a series of new works specifically created for the show as well as recent productions, which constitute Suffragette City (2015), a provocative installation consisting of brightly colored tapestries, floating banners and freestanding sculptures composed of fabric and wood. Both a celebration of feminity and a brash political statement, the work plays with the language of radical feminist movements to address issues of gender, identity and sexuality. The installation will come to life as a public demonstration in the streets around Reims’ Cathedral, where participants will carry the installation’s sculptures, banners and ‘Slut Sticks’ to form a procession of artworks. By taking her work off the gallery walls and putting it in the hands of the public, Lara Schnitger playfully explores the line between art and protest.
Lara Schnitger (born in 1969 in Haarlem, Netherlands ; lives and works in Los Angeles and Amsterdam) has recently had solo shows at  Bonnefanten Newseum in Maastricht (Beating around the Bush Episode #2 and #4,2014) and at Sculpture Center in New York (Lara Schnitger: Two Masters and Her Vile Perfume, 2010). Her work has also been shown worldwide, at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall (To be continued…, 2007), at Santa Monica Museum of Art (Follow Me: A Fantasy, 2005) and at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (THING, New Sculpture from Los Angeles, 2005). Lara Schnitger has also participated in the Liverpool Biennale in 1999 and the Shanghai Biennale in 2002.
Lara Schnitger is represented by Anton Kern Gallery in New York, Stuart Shave / Modern Art in London and Galerie Gebr Lehmann in Dresden and Berlin.

With Support of Mondriaan Fund.

FRAC Champagne-Ardenne would like to thank Delphine Quéreux-Sbaï and the staff at Médiathèque Jean Falala, in Reims, for their support in the organization of Lara Schnitger's procession.

Opening on Thursday, June 25th, 2015 at 6 pm, in the presence of the artist

Curator: Florence Derieux

To mark its re-opening, the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne will be presenting the very first solo show in France of the American artist Lisa Oppenheim. Her art praxis is situated directly in the tradition of conceptual photography, the artists of the “Pictures Generation”, and American structuralist cinema. She is interested, most particularly, in the history of photography and its pioneers, as well as the development of its techniques over time. Her works often involve a relation between the original photographic process of found photography and the process which the artist introduces in her use of this latter. A kind of photographic exhumation making it possible for past and present to inform each other.

Lisa Oppenheim’s photographs and videos are created from existing images and documents which she appropriates, re-works and transforms using different historical and contemporary techniques. Her work process often finds its source in the Internet, where she looks for images and objects which she photographically re-interprets by using both analog and digital technologies. Through this approach, with the process itself becoming the basic material, the artist offers new forms and new contexts to photographic images.

Over the past ten years, she has thus produced a body of works which explore the use of the image—historical, present-day, documentary…—in our contemporary societies, a method which might be described as an “archaeology of time and visual culture”.
For her show at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, called Hereditary Language, Lisa Oppenheim will be presenting two works, specifically produced by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. The first one, Hereditary Language, is a film structured around an eponymous sound piece by Les Levine, in which children are talking about their anxieties about life, and the future. The second one is an ambitious photographic installation, echoing a series of paintings created by Ann Craven during her residency in Reims, in 2008, and presented in her monographic exhibition at the FRAC the same year. A set of works produced in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunstverein and the Grazer Kunstverein, as well as older works, will also be on view.

A first monograph devoted to her work, titled Works 2003–2013 and co-produced by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, the Hamburger Kunstverein and the Grazer Kunstverein, has just been published by the Sternberg Press.

Lisa Oppenheim (born in 1975 in New York, where she lives and works) has recently had solo shows at the Hamburger Kunstverein (Forever is Composed of Nows, 2014), at the Grazer Kunstverein (From Abigail to Jacob (Works 2004–2014), 2014) and at the Göttingen Kunstverein (Everyone’s Camera, 2013). Her work has also been shown in many major exhibitions, including The New Photographyat The Museum of Modern Art and the ICP Triennial 2013 at the International Center of Photography, in New York, both in 2013. In 2015, she will take part in two important shows, one at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the other at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In October 2014, she was awarded two major international photographic prizes, the Aimia | AGO Photography, Ontario, Canada, and the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography, Jerusalem, Israel.
Lisa Oppenheim is represented by The Approach gallery in London, Juliette Jongma Gallery in Amsterdam, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York.

With support from Champagne Pommery, Champagne Taittinger and Maison Fossier

Opening on thursday september 27 from 6pm

Curator: Florence Derieux

Plamen Dejanoff (born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1970; lives and works in Vienna) explores links between art and the economy, developing a work that is half way between the capitalist strategies of a globalized world and an ironic and disillusioned critique of the art world. He questions the role of the artist in contemporary society. This way of thinking, as well as the means that he uses to develop and exhibit it, render him atypical. Indeed, since the beginning of the 1990s, Dejanoff has managed to define his own space in the domain of art by infiltrating those of business and communication.

The Bronze House is Plamen Dejanoff’s most ambitious project to date. He began in 2006 with the presentation of Planets of Comparison, developed for Veliko Tarnovo, a charming medieval city that today still harbours traces of its glorious past as the capital of the Bulgarian Second Empire. Dejanoff acquired seven houses in the historical centre with the intention of transforming them, aided by architects, into spaces that would house Bulgarian branches of prestigious international institutions. The original intention has since evolved due to economic and/ or administrative, but also conceptual realities. It has become a much more ambitious and complex project with Dejanoff playing multiple roles of manager, curator, architect, designer, collector, etc. Today, the land allotments have to allow for various infrastructures, all executed in bronze, including a library, a cinema, a theatre, an exhibition space and workshops.

The Bronze House is the first of these architectural installations, a veritable inhabitable structure taking the form of a colossal villa of more than 600 square metres. Upon completion of the construction, these “house-sculptures” will be composed of different modules in bronze, executed according to extremely specialised engineering criteria, even though the production is entirely realised through traditional craftsmanship. The facade, ground floor, doors, walls and stairs, indeed the entire ensemble of elements bringing all the different parts together will all be executed in the same way. The progression of the house’s construction is the central theme of this exhibition, which has already been shown at the MUMOK, Museum of Modern Art, and the MAK, the Museum of Applied Arts and Contemporary Art of Vienna (Austria), at the Kunstverein in Hamburg (Germany) and at the MAMbo, Museum of Modern Art of Bologna (Italy). In order to finance the project, Plamen Dejanoff has created a foundation that he promotes by means of a highly developed marketing strategy. Today, the success of this adventure depends on an international network of partners (artists, museum directors, collectors, entrepreneurs and gallery owners, etc.).

The choice of a material such as bronze, a classic medium in art, although unconventional in architecture, represents a challenge both in terms of construction, but also in terms of production. Each element is a veritable work of art, similar to the others only in appearance. The technique of assembling the elements evokes the decorative motifs embellishing wooden houses in this region of Bulgaria; it is the expression of an organic vernacular architecture described by Le Corbusier in his book Le Voyage d’Orient. The repetition and vertical progression of these elements that are a priori identical are also inspired by the Constantine Brancusi’s famed Colonne sans fin created in 1938, and installed in a park in the Romanian villa of Targu Jiu. This sculpture – a cast of nearly 30 metres in height – is defined by its absence of a centre, a beginning or end, using the form of the wooden pillars that support traditional Romanian houses, symbolising infinity. Another important reference for Plamen Dejanoff is the Chinati Foundation created by Donald Judd in the 1970s in Marfa, Texas. There, the American artist founded an artistic community in order to enable the creation of artworks that would normally be impossible to create in classic exhibition spaces. With this project, Plamen Dejanoff seems to want to follow in the same direction, but with the purpose of creating a veritable artistic community in Veliko Tarnovo. Though the city is very important historically (it has been recognised as a world heritage monument by Unesco), it is not very large, and its architecture has hardly evolved since Le Corbusier created his designs there around 1911. Plamen Dejanoff has imagined a very sophisticated strategy of “branding”, not without irony, in order to make it one of the most attractive destinations of Bulgaria, using the slogan “Where the Future Meets the Past”.

The exhibition presented at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne places the accent on the genesis of the project for Veliko Tarnovo. It brings together numerous models and prototypes, but also sketches, drawings and other collages illustrating the enormity of the work prior to construction. It also illustrates the installations, somewhere between conceptual art and “Hyper-Pop Art” under the registered brand name of “Dejanoff”, presented as objects for sale more than as objects exhibited in a museum. This unique ensemble is completed with a series of original drawings by Le Corbusier.

The Plamen Dejanoff exhibition has received support from Emanuel Layr gallery, Vienna.

Exhibition organized with the MAMbo, Bologna Museum of Modern Art.

With support from Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Maison founded in 1772

Opening: February 2 2012 from 6 pm 


Curator: Florence Derieux

The philosophical, political and psychoanalytic concepts form the very essence of Emily Wardill's films. They retrace a history of thought by means of multiple narrations, embellished with numerous soundtracks composed by the artist. Her filmic grammar is mysterious, to say the least, because the classic codes of interpretation are obsolete. We therefore have to penetrate into what seems to be a fascinating representation of the unconscious. Several levels of narration intertwine, often evoking Fassbinderian forms of melodrama, and allowing us to associate an eminently political idea with more popular visual references. All of her work thus seems to be a vast scientific experiment that catapults the spectator into a suspension between the initial premise and the final result, there, where the irrational becomes a requirement for being able to understand a given situation.

For her first exhibition in a French institution, entitled The Hands Of A Clock, Even When Out Of Order, Must Know And Let The Dumbest Little Watch Know Where They Stand, Otherwise Neither Is A Dial But Only A White Face With A Trick Mustache, Emily Wardill notably presents her latest film, Fulll Firearms (90', HD), commissioned by If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Serpentine Gallery (London) and Film London's FLAMIN Productions, and co-produced by Arts Council England - Film London Artists' Moving Image Network and City Projects (London) with support from M HKA (Antwerp), Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe), FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims), the Culture Programme of the European Commission (Brussels) and the Mondrian Foundation (Amsterdam).

Emily Wardill's new long form film utilizes the form of the melodrama to tell the story of Imelda, a woman in her 40s who inherits a fortune from her father, a successful arms manufacturer. With her inheritance she sets about building a house to accommodate the ghosts of the people killed by weapons produced by her father's company. Whilst the house is being built a number of people move in and squat the half finished property. Imelda's perception of the squatters is skewed - she isn't hostile to their presence because she simply sees them as the ghosts she expected. The film's narrative is built around the relationship between Imelda and the architect she hires to design the house. He indulges her every whim despite being aware that she is delusional. Fulll Firearms cleverly interlaces the themes of deception, storytelling and displacement.  Elements related to the film complete the exhibition.

The exhibition also introduces the film The Pips, 2011, (3 min 39 sec, 16mm) as well as a series of sculptural digital prints of silk related to this fascinating work. The Pips explores movement and the materiality of it, the instigation of one and the duration of the other. Shot in black and white on 16mm, then transferred to a digital projection, this film focuses on British gymnastics champion, Francesca Jones. The film begins with a straight depiction of Jones' routine; the patterns created by her ribbon baton trace her movements in the air. It is a reflection of her actions, imitating her and existing because of her. Near the end of the film, the gymnast's body becomes stretched, elongated and distorted ultimately breaking into a series of mutant parts. Her face remains unfathomed and she gives no acknowledgement to her own decay. As Jones's becomes still, her actions take on their own identity; their materiality deconstructed by Wardill's emphasis on the physical replication of movement. The body and its motions become contained in the object, revealing an inherent plasticity in the gymnast's performance.

Born in Rugby (the United Kingdom) in 1977, Emily Wardill lives and works in London, where she is Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art. Over the last years, she has produced important monographic exhibitions, including Windows broken, Break, Broke Together in 2010 at the De Appel Foundation in Amsterdam, and Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck in 2007 at the ICA in London. Her work has also been exhibited at the Tate Britain and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Witte de With in Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Reykjavik Art Museum. She is represented by Jonathan Viner Gallery (London), Standard (Oslo) and Altman Siegel Gallery (San Fransisco).

Emily Wardill's exhibition has received support from Fluxus, the Franco-British fund for contemporary art, the British Council and Standard, Oslo.

With support from Champagne Pommery

Dix ans après sa toute première exposition personnelle, présentée au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne en 1999, Laurent Montaron investit à nouveau ses espaces d’exposition pour y présenter un ambitieux projet monographique réunissant une série d’œuvres inédites, réalisées spécialement à cette occasion.

Le titre de l’exposition, AYYLU, fait référence au code morse, qui permet de transmettre un texte grâce à une série d’impulsions courtes et longues. Cet alphabet attribue à chaque lettre, chiffre et signe de ponctuation une combinaison unique de signaux, mécaniques ou visuels, plus ou moins brefs. Parallèlement au code morse, des codes commerciaux ont été inventés pour la télégraphie, tels AYYLU qui signifie « Not clearly coded, repeat more clearly » (pas assez clair, veuillez répéter plus clairement). Chacune des œuvres présentées dans cette exposition décline la problématique du langage et de sa transmission via différentes tech-nologies, qu’elles soient ancestrales ou au contraire contemporaines.

Balbvtio, film co-produit avec l’Institut d’art contemporain de Villeurbanne*, est une œuvre inédite composée de deux films identiques projetés côte à côte. Elle constitue une narration cinématographique, mais également une mise à distance de la rhétorique même du cinéma. Générés par deux prises de vues différentes, ces films placent le contenu de l’histoire sur un autre plan que celui de la matérialité de l’image. L’histoire évoque de manière allégorique le message et le lien que tisse la parole avec l’Esperanto. Conçue à la fin du 19e siècle par le docteur Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, l’Esperanto est une langue dont la syntaxe est basée sur des langues déjà existantes, dans le but de faciliter la communication et la compréhension entre des individus de diverses nationalités.

L’intérêt de Laurent Montaron pour le cinéma apparaît ainsi en filigrane dans sa pratique. Depuis la série Sous un nouveau jour, qu’il avait pré-sentée au FRAC Champagne-Ardenne à l’automne 1999, cet intérêt s’est constamment développé au travers d’images, d’objets et de dispositifs, à l’instar du film 16mm Key, réalisé spécialement pour cette exposition.

Le travail de Laurent Montaron montre, tout en les interrogeant, les habitudes et les mécanismes qui régissent notre regard. Il souligne ainsi la manière dont les outils façonnent nos représentations et indexent de façon tangible la manière dont se construit la pensée. Dans cette perspective, le réel voisine l’imaginaire.

Le film Balbvtio, oeuvre coproduite par le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne et l'Institut d'art contemporain de Villeurbanne, y est également présenté du 28 janvier au 15 mars 2009. http://www.i-art-c.org

Commissaire de l'exposition: Florence Derieux

Works by Eric Duyckaerts, Robert Filliou, Alain Jacquet, Cristian Lapie, Philippe Mayaux, Gustav Metzger, Laurent Montaron, Thierry Perthuisot, Jacqueline Salmon, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Angel Vergara