frac champagne-ardenne
fonds régional d'art contemporain
1, place museux 51100 reims
contact@frac-champagneardenne.org
clément rodzielski
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Curated by Florence Derieux and Antoine Marchand
Whether using or showing photocopies, magazines, or film posters, Clément Rodzielski questions the conditions of the appearance, production and circulation of images in his work. On the occasion of his exhibition in the Chapelle de l’Ancien Collège des Jésuites, Rodzielski has chosen to bring together an ensemble of works that all revolve around notions of appropriation. Indeed, he has appropriated a heterogeneous array of objects and materials that he manipulates and modifies according to various operations. Whether cut out, reframed, painted or recovered, all are ways of questioning the visitor about the very nature of the objects presented.
In this way, the exhibition posters are in the format of JCDecaux. The poster, as a medium of communication, is by essence a reproducible object. Clément Rodzielski’s intervention therefore makes of it a unique object that accumulates the functions of presentation in addition to those of communication. It then goes from being a device of peripheral announcement to being an element wholly independent of the exhibition.
Similarly, on the central platform, the busts borrowed from the display cases become the support structures for miniscule paintings.
Finally, with the ensemble of A4 format sheets of paper presented at the back of the Chapelle, Rodzielski summons a repertoire of forms, fragments of internet pages, bits of scrap in a sense, generated by the very memory of computers.
Clément Rodzielski (born in Albi in 1979; lives and works in Paris) graduated from the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He is represented by the Chantal Crousel gallery in Paris and the Campoli Presti gallery in London. His work was recently exhibited at the Fondation Ricard and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, at the GAMeC in Bergamo and at the Bielefelder Kunstverein. Furthermore, from November 2011 to January 2012, Rodzielski was invited by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne for a residency in liaison with the Lycée Val de Murigny. There, he also created an exhibition between May 16th and June 15th 2012, as part of the PAG Espaces de l’œuvre, which links together the Campus scolaire Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Lycée Val de Murigny, the Collège Pierre Brossolette and the Collège Trois-Fontaines.
With support from Champagne Pommery
thomas dupouy
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Opening on saturday 19 May at 6pm
Performance at 7pm15
Exhibition Curator: Antoine Marchand
Thomas Dupouy’s work explores the often porous frontiers between sound art and contemporary art by integrating sound as a medium or as a simple referent. Indeed, he approaches the figurative dimension through a sculptural representation that is distinct from strictly sonorous considerations per se. The temporality related to the very nature of sound and perceptual conditions is a means of opening up his work to different fields of experimentation. The idea of sending and receiving is omnipresent in his work.
The Chapelle de l’Ancien Collège des Jésuites is powerfully symbolic, in defiance of a classic exhibition site. Our way of looking at it is unquestionably conditioned by its singular history and architecture. In this exhibit, Thomas Dupouy thus calls into question what we project onto this kind of building. He does so by focusing on its acoustic qualities, especially the highly symbolic elevation of sound.
Echoing his Harmonie des spheres (Harmony of Spheres) exhibit on the Colbert School Campus, presented simultaneously, Thomas Dupouy uses Pythorean theorems, such as the idea according to which equilibrium – or harmony – keeps the earth functioning, a theory often qualified as the “harmony of the spheres”. He has thus created a work of sound that maintains a balance of audio “feedback” (the Larsen Effect), played by an amplifier and guitar. This feedback is treated so that it’s composed of a suite of “true” notes (also called a Pythagorean suite), infinite and perfectly ordered, each oscillating with the other. It is a work recalling the polyphonic character of sound divided into several voices; a meditative piece questioning the scales of time and space.
Thomas Dupouy was born in Versailles in 1981. He graduated from the ESAD in Reims in 2008, and also studied electro-acoustics at Césaré, National Centre of Musical Creation in Reims, between 2004 and 2007. His work has notably been exhibited at Tripostal in Lille, at the Plateau / FRAC Île-de-France and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. During the 2011-2012 school year, at the invitation of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Thomas Dupouy was guest artist in residence in mediation at the Jean-Baptiste Colbert School Campus, as part of the PAG Espaces de l’oeuvre programme.
With support from Champagne Pommery
nicola martini / about multiple events
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Opening: April 4 2012 from 6 pm
Curator: Florence Derieux
Materials and their modification are both the point of departure and the culmination of the artistic process for Nicola Martini. His work leans toward the creation of sculptural forms and installations, but its real specificity resides in its development. Martini stages the physical changes in states, which may be linked to the very nature of materials used (resin, synthetic fibres, cement), and provoked by their interaction, or through the use of chemicals. In this way he examines the impossibility of containing matter. Whether it is about adding or removing, or the addition and subtraction of matter, each gesture is laden with meaning.
Though the materials used unquestionably evoke the Arte Povera movement, Martini’s work distances itself from its famous antecedents by the fact that it is not in a poetic or sensitive rapport with the materials, but instead its singularity lies in the very possibilities of a material. It is a permanent experiment leaving room for chance and the unexpected. Thus the chemical principals developed by this young Italian artist lead to a reflection on the role of the artist and the paternity of a work of art, insofar as the works presented metamorphose through time to exist in the beyond, even independently of the presence of the artist himself.
For his very first exhibition in France, Nicola Martini proposes a series of unknown works whose installation resonates directly with the architecture of the former Jesuits school and its very unusual light. Though the three sculptures presented were simultaneously created during his three-month residency at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Nicola Martini nevertheless considers them as independent works. Each is free to acquire connections with each of the others. By the same token, in a clear concern for neutrality, all the works exhibited are entitled Senza Titolo (Untitled), enabling the visitor to attest to their own experience of the work without being influenced by other prior information. Only the exhibition title, About Multiple Events, carries keys to understanding. It allows the possible connections between the different works to appear, and enables the idea of different rhythms, temporalities and levels of reading.
Nicola Martini was born in Florence in 1984. He lives and works in Florence and Milan, where he is a member of the collaborative structure, Laboratorio. His work has been exhibited notably at Macro - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rome in 2012, as part of the Lido Festival, organised in parallel with Artissima in Turin; at Les urbaines festival in Lausanne and at Viafarini DOCVA in Milan in 2011; he also exhibited at the Brown Project Space (Milan) in 2010. He received the Ariane de Rothschild Prize in 2011 and is currently working on the publication of a project on his work entitled Su molteplici manifestazioni, to be co-published by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne and the Galleria Kaufmann Repetto, and appearing through Kaleidoscope Editions.
Supported by Champagne Pommery
louise hervé & chloé maillet / où l'on incendie le diorama
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Opening on thursday 22 september 2011 from 6 pm
Exhibition curator : Antoine Marchand
Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet’s work has been particularly enriched by their university studies. They graduated in art and medieval history respectively, and have worked continuously since the beginning of their collaboration in 2001, under the name of the I.I.I.I. (International Institute for Important Items). They harness their knowledge to create narratives that are both off-beat and fascinating, unabashedly mixing together tennis players and mythological heroes, New Wave film and Sci-Fi, and gothic and B novels. Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet use discourse, installation and film indifferently, seeking to stimulate the spectator’s imagination. The latter allow themselves to be guided, transported, by this combination of elements that are at the very least at odds with each other, in order to fully appreciate the improbable alchemy that the artists have managed to create.
The exhibition When the Diorama is Burned deals with the history of the ‘double effect’ diorama invented by Louis Daguerre in the 19th century. Instead of a classic reading, however, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet offer an unexpected version, influenced, naturally, by Daguerre’s theories, in addition to those of the Jesuits, John Carpenter, and the history of the city of Rheims. With this in mind, the artists propose an exhibition of tremendous generosity; a totally novel project created specifically for the chapel in the former Jesuits school in which the FRAC is located. With this exhibition, they position themselves as heirs to Raymond Hains in their wish to mix fiction and reality, to layer different levels of culture and language with no hierarchy whatsoever. It is logical, therefore, that their first solo exhibition in an institution take place in Rheims, where Raymond Hains lived and spent so much his time.
Born in 1981, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet live and work in Paris. Their work has been presented most notably in group exhibits in Bétonsalon, at the Palais de Tokyo and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. They have also created numerous works and performance-lectures both in France and abroad at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Kunstverein in Graz. They are represented by the Marcelle Alix gallery in Paris.
Supported by Champagne Pommery
sylvie auvray
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Vernissage le jeudi 7 juillet à partir de 18h00
Discussion avec l'artiste et Xavier Douroux (Le Consortium, Dijon) le jeudi 7 juillet à 18h00
Commissaire de l'expopsition : Florence Derieux
Parallèlement à son travail de peinture – bien qu’il soit difficile de dissocier les pratiques qu’elle développe au sein de sa production –, Sylvie Auvray réalise depuis quelques années des sculptures qu’elle crée à partir d’objets trouvés de formes, de tailles et de matériaux divers qu’elle achète au hasard de ses visites de marchés, de brocantes ou de sites de vente en ligne. Les Bibelots projectiles sont constitués de figurines recouvertes plus ou moins partiellement d’une épaisse couche de plâtre, coloré ou non, la matière conservant les traces de la pression des mains et des doigts de l’artiste. Ses sculptures en céramique subissent elles aussi un traitement pour le moins singulier : elles peuvent ainsi être émaillées, cuites, pressées ou peintes, entre autres actions de customisation. Sylvie Auvray choisit de sortir de l’oubli ces objets trouvés, qu’elle sélectionne minutieusement, de les ranimer et de leur donner une nouvelle vie. Ainsi, telle figurine trouvée sur ebay mute-t-elle en céramique émaillée d’or… L’objet quitte alors la catégorie du kitsch, de la nostalgie et de la mélancolie pour devenir contemporain, digne et, enfin, « s’épanouir ». Présentées en groupes, pour les plus petites, tels des soldats de plomb hirsutes et désordonnés, ces sculptures nous entraînent dans un univers des plus personnels.
Pour son exposition à Reims, Sylvie Auvray propose une toute nouvelle série de sculptures dont la présentation entrera en résonance avec l’architecture de la chapelle de l’Ancien Collège des Jésuites.
Avec le soutien de Champagne Pommery
eugène van lamsweerde, inez van lamsweerde, vinoodh matadin
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Opening on Wendnesday 25 May 2011 from 6 pm
Curator: Florence Derieux
Painter and sculptor Eugène van Lamsweerde, of Dutch origin, has for many years been living and working in Romilly-sur-Seine, in Champagne-Ardenne. For more than five years, he has been collaborating with Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, two of the most highly-esteemed fashion photographers in the world.
Through numerous collaborations, notably with Björk and Madonna, the designers M/M and the creators of luxury brands such as Véronique Leroy, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, Balenciaga, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Vuitton, etc., Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s work has long been able to cross borders. It appears simultaneously in print media, advertising and in venues for contemporary art. The images are often strange, if not surreal. They play on codes of beauty and identity and express a very personal vision of the notion of duality (beauty/ the grotesque, attraction/ repulsion), ambivalence (androgyny) and eroticism.
Eugène van Lamsweerde, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s works are called Sculptographs. The works combine two techniques, namely, photography and sculpture. Eugène van Lamsweerde meticulously chose some of the couple’s photographs, which he then cut up, conserving only a detail of the initial image. He manipulates the material, by folding, crumpling, or twisting it. He then reworks small twigs of metal, sculpting them in relation to the chosen image, as though creating surroundings for it. In this way, he creates a third dimension for these images, that of space. The resulting extended universe that appears is at once beautiful and fragile, delicate and graceful, protective and troubling. In other words, fascinating.
sgrafo vs fat lava
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Opening on Thursday 10 March from 6 pm
Curator: Nicolas Trembley
This exhibition brings certain problems to the fore that are still regularly discussed today, and that affects this systematic reassessment of art and its function, of art and design, etc. It questions several ideas: that of the evolution of form and taste, of the unity and multiplicity of objects, of their quasi-industrial craftsmanship, of the collection and even the passage of the everyday object into the fetish object. Finally, it contributes to the writing of the particular and not the historicized story of these objects, mixing good and bad taste, enlightening this eternal back-and-forth between so-called “popular” taste and its appropriation of “vintage”. It singles out the fashion effect and recalls the recurring question of the decorative and of handicrafts, and of their more or less recent shift towards the field of contemporary art.
Sgrafo vs Fat Lava enables us to view a nomenclature of gayer, coquettish and uninhibited forms and colors with lightness and simple pleasure, with a sensation of déjà-vu, that art history is ordinarily incapable of offering us. The aesthetic of these vases approaches the typical if not the folkloric. It functions in parallel with the 1960-1980 period, the most productive years, the “seventies” spirit with its return to nature, tending towards effects of texture and imitations of shells, bark and fossils. Even if other, more minimal forms, inspired by the Bauhaus, might be shown, and serve more to structure the architecture of objects (vases, jugs), the decorative motifs often remain closer to Pop Art and Op Art than Minimalism. “Futurist” inspired pieces may also be found, where the use of an immaculate, white enamel recalls Pierre Cardin’s creations, Jacques Tati’s set designs, or, for the most “Pop” oriented, Jean-Christophe Averty’s animations for TV.
This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva (5 November 2010 - 5 February 2011), and the Galerie Kréo, Paris (20 May - 23 juillet 2011).
In conjunction with the exhibition is Sgrafo vs Fat Lava, a co-edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine in Geneva, and the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne published by JRP Ringier, with support from the the Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich.
With support from Champagne Deutz
la musique du hasard
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Oeuvre de Henrik Hakansson
Commissaires : Florence Derieux et Sébastien Faucon
Le Palais du Tau et la chapelle de l'Ancien Collège des Jésuites accueillent à Reims, dans le cadre d’un parcours inédit d’expositions dans dix régions en France, ainsi qu’en Belgique et au Luxembourg, intitulé Diagonales : son, vibration et musique dans la collection du Centre national des arts plastiques, l’exposition La musique du hasard, conçue en collaboration entre le CNAP et le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, qui réunit des œuvres des collections du Fonds national d’art contemporain et du Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Champagne-Ardenne. Ce dernier a en effet développé pendant plusieurs années un axe d’acquisition vers les pratiques liées au son et à la musique dans le champ des arts plastiques. L’exposition permet d’explorer les liens entre ces deux collections.
Empreintes de l’influence de John Cage, les œuvres présentées proposent une poétique du hasard, entre bricolage et mixage, une expérience du quotidien, la recherche d’un degré zéro.
Vernissage le 1er septembre à partir de 18h00
Avec le soutien de Champagne Deutz
apichatpong weerasethakul
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Vernissage le jeudi 8 juillet 2010 à partir de 18h00
Pour inaugurer son nouveau programme d’expositions dans la chapelle de l’Ancien Collège des Jésuites à Reims, le FRAC Champagne-Ardenne présente une œuvre tout récemment entrée dans sa collection, My Mother's Garden (2007), de l’artiste et cinéaste thaïlandais Apichatpong Weerasethakul (né à Bangkok en 1970 ; vit et travaille à Bangkok et à Chiang Mai), qui a reçu la « Palme d’or » au dernier Festival de Cannes pour son film Oncle Boonmee, celui qui se souvient de ses vies antérieures (2010).
Après une enfance passée à Khon Kaen, au nord-est de la Thaïlande, Apichatpong Weerasethakul a étudié l’architecture à l’Université de Khon Kaen puis le cinéma à l’Institute of Arts de Chicago en 1994. Réalisateur de courts-métrages depuis 1994, il a sorti son premier long-métrage, Mysterious Object at Noon, en 2000. Ses projets artistiques, qui traitent notamment de la mémoire et de questions sociopolitiques, lui ont valu une large reconnaissance internationale et de nombreuses récompenses. En 2004, il a notamment reçu le Prix du jury au festival de Cannes pour Tropical Malady. Une importante rétrospective de son travail a été présentée en 2009 à la Haus der Kunst de Munich et au Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Entre divagation onirique et expérimentation formelle, Apichatpong Weerasethakul propose avec My Mother’s Garden un film inspiré d'une collection de bijoux créée pour Dior par Victoire de Castellane, elle-même influencée par différents types de fleurs et de plantes carnivores. My Mother’s Garden est également un hommage au jardin de la mère de l’artiste, avec des images de racines d'orchidées sauvages, d’insectes et de divers organismes vivants. Dans ce film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul explore les relations entre l’art, la mode et le design en lien avec la mondialisation.
Avec le soutien de Champagne Deutz
