Giulia Essyad uses her body as both an investigative tool and a physical projection surface, immersing it in fantastical cinematic universes inspired by medieval legends, pop culture and cyborg aesthetics. This composite, hybrid, technological body enables her to escape binary gender classification. Through ultra-sensuality and glamour, and an over-determination of the codes of extreme femininity, Essyad invites viewers to critically deconstruct self-representation and the contemporary body. The body becomes a militant, iconic vector, released from taboos, canons and aesthetic stereotypes, a means of breaking free from essentialist, naturalist tendencies and simplistic dichotomies such as nature/culture, man/woman, human/animal, etc.
In a very free, syncretic style, the artist articulates concepts that range from animism to polytheism, by way of fantasy. She draws on a vast, multicultural range of natural and supernatural phenomena, myths and more traditional, ancient beliefs. In this multifaceted universe, which is simultaneously digital and archaic, the artist creates avatars of herself, metamorphosed into marketing material worthy of the most over-produced advertisements. They oscillate between an amused, assertive animality and a sophistication that would make digital or Hollywood sisters of Ann Lee or Betty Boop, ancient nymphs or modern mermaids. These dolls are transformed into warriors, their bodies liberated from imposed norms and the codes of classical beauty.
This is not Giulia Essyad’s first collaboration with the Centre d’édition contemporaine. In 2015 and 2016, she presented two readings on the occasion of the exhibition of the collective sound edition Artists’ Voices produced in 2016, made up of three vinyls: a poem, Poetry Reading December 2016, and a text, Prophecy Podcast 1. In 2022, the CEC edited Blueberry Studies.Before publication 8, part of the Before publication collection linked to the catalogue L’Effet papillon, 2008-2025, as well as a print, temple-piss19-psd, 2020, an edition offered to members of the CEC association in 2022.
Giulia Essyad is presenting a new body of work specially produced for the INNARDS exhibition, as well as a new edition, Unspeakable (i’m ready), 2023-2024. The latter consists of photographic reproductions of a series of nude images taken as part of a Pro Helvetia residency in Bengaluru, India, in 2022. Unspeakable (i’m ready) includes five photographs of the artist experimenting on herself with the Japanese bondage technique known as shibari. This sexual practice became popular in Japan in the 1950s, before gradually becoming an “art” performed by masters whose techniques were exported and popularised in the West. Giulia Essyad reinterprets them in a more personal and empirical way, for example in the performance Rosabel…BELIEVE (Perrrformat, Zurich, 2022).
From a technical point of view, these photographs are black-and-white reproductions of images that were produced using the wet collodion process – a photographic technique dating from 1860, made famous by the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the precursor of chronophotography – , in postcard format, on thin sheets of Plexiglas. Sixty-five of these reproductions were individually wrapped in transparent plastic boxes and packaged like computer products, before being bound together with an elastic band in groups of five photographs.
The Unspeakable (i’m ready) edition, like a pack of nudes for sale, is presented in a display inspired by the layouts of electronics stores. The exhibition space calls to mind the interior of a mobile phone shop: in the centre of the room, several phones are laid out on a table. These are actually little cobbled-together lightboxes: DIY objects made from hot glue and salvaged phone cases, rudimentary reproductions of these communication tools. Essyad’s imitations of these indispensable everyday objects are deliberately jerry-built, but jubilantly so. Smartphone cases are transformed into substrates, the exclusive backdrops for her self-portraits, her stagings of herself and her character: low-tech showcases for a body that is both deconstructed and augmented, uninhibited, futuristic and cyborg-like. For Essyad, IT tools (telephones, USB cables) and terminology (RAM, external hard drives) are metaphors for the human body, its venous and nervous systems, its memory, brain and entrails (INNARDS).
The artist, herself a central figure in this provocative, no-holds-barred body of work, offers an alternative to the dictates of a perfect physique, exposing the nudity of a body that oversteps the norms imposed by contemporary society, social networks and unattainable standards. Giulia Essyad humorously turns these tools of ultra-communication to her advantage by modifying them in a deliberately sloppy way. She mocks them, attempts to destroy them from within, well aware that it is almost impossible to free oneself completely from them.
Her overexposed, hypersexualised character claims a right to difference and self-determination, as a means of being totally oneself through a joyful, exuberant theatricality. She plays with the products of over-communication and over-information, in a world that claims to be totally transparent whilst paradoxically producing a double bind of coercion, control and intolerance.
Giulia Essyad is a Swiss artist, born in Lausanne in 1992, who lives and works in Geneva. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in various venues in Switzerland and abroad: INNARDS, CEC, Geneva (2024); Tunnel Vision III, Tunnel Tunnel, Cinema Bellevaux, Lausanne (2023); Chocolate Factory, Cherish, Geneva (2020) ; Blue Period, Lokal Int, Bienne (2020); A Selene Blues, Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2020); Herstory, Tunnel Tunnel, Lausanne (2016); Faces of the Goddess, Quark, Geneva (2016); Immortality, Forde, Geneva (2015); Hunter, MJ Gallery, Geneva (2014). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Bourses de la Ville de Genève 2024, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2024); Of Bodies in Digital Life, Kunsthaus, Langenthal (2024); Swiss Media Art – Pax Art Awards, HeK, Basel (2024); Swiss Art Awards, BAK, Basel (2023); Jane of All Trades, Schmorévaz, Paris (2023); A performer’s misfits, Oxyd, Winterthur (2023); Ja, wir kopieren, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn (2023); Prix Mobilière, Art Geneva, Geneva (2023); Claustrophobia Alpina, curated by Varun Kumar, Forde, Geneva (2022); Unbetrauerbar, For, Basel (2022); Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, CAC, Geneva (2021); Octobre Numérique:Faire Monde,Pays d’Arles (2021); Fotoromanza, Le Commun, Geneva (2021); Contrology, Kunsthaus Riehen, Basel (2021).
Giulia Essyad’s exhibition is supported by Erna und Curt Burgauer Foundation, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation and Inarema.
Each of Denis Savary’s artwork is the fruit of thorough research into fields as varied as history, art history, literature and sometimes even science. The result of this process is a series of cross-referenced pieces, whose hybridity also plays out at a technical level. Savary values collaboration with craftspeople from different trades (glass, carpentry, ceramics, tapestry, etc.), which works as an opportunity for him to explore their knowledge and to experiment with techniques. At first sight fragmented, his work produces an abundant and heterogenous world, filled with objects charged with a multitude of mythologies, a patchwork of personal memories and references — literary, musical, historical, and folkloric — transformed or reinterpreted.
These intertwined mentions constitute a mental archive, a sort of non-hierarchical library made of extracts, flashbacks and shortcuts between art history, literary figures, between fascination for a variety of artisanal techniques and scientific informations. Savary’s work seemingly belongs within this generic and playful sense of research: the emphasis shall be put on the manufacturing of the objects, prior to their transformation into actual artworks. Therefore, the process itself is fundamental, as a research system, empirical as well as experimental, a never-ending stream of thoughts. If production is carried out upstream, these new propositions might still be reworked, recombined, and modified during the exhibition set-up. Savary is an artist who favors continuity over finality, as a way of escaping the finiteness of the work and remaining curious and receptive to new narratives.
The exhibition title itself, Quiet Clubbing, works as a common thread running through several editions that come together in a nocturnal, festive atmosphere, through which light beams, plays of transparency and dancing movements occur: a collection of glass objects, a video, and a series of posters. Savary’s objects, being transformed and offbeat, filled with references and modified with technical manipulations pushed to the limits of feasibility, are the products of a sensual enjoyment of craftsmanship and the manipulated matter. In a way, one could argue that Savary invents ultra-pop objects, sort of giant toys, unreal, which build an eerie theater from one exhibition to the other.
For the CEC edition, Campfire, Savary invoked the image of the wood fire. This edition is made of seven glass objects produced by the workshop of master glassmaker Vincent Breed, in Brussieu in Lyonnais, with whom Savary has been collaborating since 2013. The choice of the wood fire works as a reference to the origins of the birth of glass. Following Pline the Elder, the first glass was made by accident around 2000 years B.C. by Phoenicians nitre (sodium carbonate) dealers who were lighting a fire on a beach. The heat emanating from the fire, in contact with nitre and silice coming from the sand, generated a chemical reaction which allowed for glass to form.
The idea for this project goes back to 2021, when the artist began an experimental work session on glass. One of the collaborations between Denis Savary and the glassmaker consisted of covering various wooden objects in molten glass, in order to eventually recover the molding. Savary based his edition on the same precedent. These seven unique shapes were made as a technical challenge: reproducing in glass a campfire built with wooden elements. The aim was to cover this highly flammable material with molten glass and obtain its imprint: to destroy and to create with fire, to let emerge out of this incandescent matter a glass silhouette, transparent and liquid, a ghost which would contain the traces and the souls of the wood and the fire; an achievement that evokes the alchemist’s gesture — an artist as alchemist. These aquatic objects made of glass produce luminous diffraction effects that recall the series of images installed in a panorama: aurora borealis seen from a beach covered in snow, between sky and sea, between the shadow of the night of the Far North and the spectral, iridescent waves of the northern lights.
This passage of light is reversed in a new video produced especially for this exhibition, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, realized with the help of Geoffrey Cottenceau for the photography and Nicolas Ponce for the editing. The first few seconds suggest a CGI animated video reminiscent of the slow, slightly jerky movements of obsolete computer screensavers. Then, little by little, one can enter into the image as in a dark room, where the eye struggles to find its way around and to discern shapes and objects. Architectural elements progressively appear thank to the spotlights of the nightclub, but it then becomes quickly noticeable that this space is a mere illusion. Indeed, the single object of the video is one of the Villa series’ miniature houses that Denis Savary exhibited in the Bernheim gallery, in Zurich, in 2021 (Ithaca). Now working as a projection surface, the Villa II welcomes on its walls another video, Le Must, which was realized by Savary in 2004 and which describes, in still image, a light show inside a nightclub. The video was the central motif of his solo exhibition Baltiques, in 2012, at the Kunsthalle Bern. This mise en abyme actually dissimulates a voluntary play of inversion, of movements and passages, from the inside to the outside, a sort of interpenetration of private and public spaces.
Blood on the Dining-Room Floor borrows its title to Gertrude Stein’s first detective novel, written after the successful Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. As she lived recluse with her partner, Alice, in the French village of Bilignin, Stein started writing this novel, inspired by the various events and intrigues of the small hamlet daily life. Her country house then becomes a location from which Stein could observe this microcosm filled with underlying violence. With this video, Savary looks back to a specific period in his work, in the beginning of the 2000s, when he was producing videos mostly from or within the immediate environment of his family home in Vaud. Realized in miniDV, a bygone production mean, these videos represent an era where the house worked as a studio and as a vantage point overlooking the world. Curiously, amongst the miniature houses of the Villa series, the one chosen for Blood on the Dining-Room Floor is the one which looks the most similar to the artist’s old house.
In his version realized for the CEC website, the video is accompanied by an eponym sound piece, a work commissioned to the artists composers Maria Esteves and Mathilde Hansen. The sound and the image are merged and seem to be out of sync, as a dance off the beat. Progressively, the house’s motion slows down, and reveals the complexity of a mutli-track House sound from which emerges a voice that chants extract from Gertrude Stein’s novel. The video dissimulates a pun, between the musical genre of House music and the main subject of the film, the artist’s childhood house. Set in a rotating movement, the miniature house from the Blood on the Dining-Room Floor video reminds of dance-floor disco balls projecting rays of colored light: a light show, like the festive counterpart to the northern lights on the Quiet Clubbing posters, or the mysterious reflections caught in the transparency of the glass objects in the Campfire edition.
Denis Savary (1981) lives and works in Geneva. His work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, such as : Josy’s Club, with Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Synagogue de Delme, Delme (2023) ; Octogone, avec Chloé Delarue, Mayday, Basel (2023) ; Flower of Fog, GNYP Gallery, Berlin (2022) ; Ithaca, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich (2021) ; Ambarabà Cicci Cocco, with Alfredo Aceto, Stiftung Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Saint Gall (2021) ; Ventimiglia, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021); Phantom, Lemme, Sion (2021). His many recent group exhibitions include : Temps de Mars, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2024) ; The Big Chill, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2023) ; Mirage, MCBA, Lausanne (2023) ; Deep Deep Down, MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2023) ; The Puppet Show, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2022) ; Inventaire, Mamco, Geneva (2021) ; Ballard in Albisola, Casa Jorn House, Albisola (2021) ; La Suite – Regards sur les artistes des collections des Frac, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2021) ; Body Double, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021). In 2024, Denis Savary’s work will be the subject of several solo and group exhibitions: Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan ; Denis Savary, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London ; Roma, Roma, Roma, Rolex Learning Center, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. In 2025, he will be exhibited at KBCB Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art, Biel.
Zsuzsanna Szabo, production manager, is in charge of digital transformation projects for the CEC (2021-2024)
Denis Savary’s exhibition has been produced with the support of the Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, the Leenaards Foundation, the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and Canton of Geneva.
Before attempting to unravel the meaning, or meanings, behind the title of this exhibition, ENCORE TROP, we can consider a couple of quotes by John Armleder from the recent catalogue of a group exhibition he curated, It Never Ends, John M. Armleder & Guests (Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Bruxelles, September 2020). The title of this solo and group exhibition seems to imply a perception of time and space that distances itself from the definitive. Armleder feeds on the propositions, the circumstances as well as the context to make his choices : « I always work following the logic of the space and the people who invite me […] »1. Here, we find a very seventies philosophy, horizontal, a philosophy of delegation, where the very existence of the work of art is shared by all, in a limitless and open-ended interaction which considers the means of production, the exhibition spaces, and finally the viewer as entirely part of the creative process. In the same catalog one can find the sentence chosen as the exhibition title at the Museion of Bolzano in 2018 : « Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. » (« The more it changes, the more it remains the same. »)2
This observation echoes perfectly the circumstances of the exhibition at the CEC, ENCORE TROP, which follows our first collaboration in 1992, more than 30 years ago, when we produced a series of 21 engravings (etchings and monotypes), all unique, which offered a range of different types of print : monochrome surfaces resulting from the inking of an industrially sanded plate, drippings of acid that, when inked, would transform into colorful printed drips, or simply trinkets and glitters directly thrown onto the plate, which would then be crushed and melded with the paper under the pressure of the press roll. Comment from the time: « Etching gives John Armleder the freedom to use the same « motifs » over and over again, with little to no work. In contrast to the traditional practice of using a plate to reproduce the same etching in several copies, John Armleder starts from four matrices treated differently in order to produce a set of dissimilar prints. Thus, he can choose various combinations – superimpositions, inversions, color inking. Without any pre-established system, the decisions depend on the circumstances, the flaws and the successes of each print run. John Armleder rediscovers this freedom of choice which allows him to oscillate between etching and pictorial effects, between free abstraction and geometry, between necessary and relative, between style and non-style, between self-criticism and distancing. »3
Indeed, everything changes and nothing changes. The monotypes exhibited today at the CEC recall the ones produced and exhibited in 1992 : monotypes, unique pieces, available in series, where everything is kept as is. In the series currently exhibited, Shady place for sunny people (2024), three large sheets display drips, and four others, almost fully white, are in reality protective sheets, marked with colored residual imprints from the pressure of a weighed system, which allowed the transfer of masses of ink on the first ones, and left the traces of their overflows on the second ones. These simple stains also echo the « splashes », recurring stylized motifs in Armleder’s work, here screenprinted, gold or silver, on two sets of paper sheets, pink or yellow, mounted on cardboard, recovered from an edition produced in 1979, a leporello, Lézards Sauvages IIa/ « égouttés ». Each leaflet used to display a printed reproduction of a comb, whole or broken, found on the streets of Geneva. This harvest offered Armleder the casualness of a stroll and the recovery of a pre-existing object : a performance which lasted the time of his journeys, and a ready-made form, an abstract, random and unselective grid, which made the series possible.
This new edition keeps the same title while continuing the numbering begun in 1979, Lézards Sauvages III and IV, (1979) 2024. The recovery of old material from more than 40 years ago, 1979/2024, suggests a crushing of time, between nostalgia and newness. A continuous creation cycle between recovery and self-citation, which eludes the linearity and finality of the retrospective, blurring the lines of dating, archiving and conservation, preferring « the semicolon, the comma to the full stop. »4
Concerning the comb metaphor, beyond Duchamp’s ready-made or Armleder’s iconic braid, worn unchanged and at all times, the notion of gap deserves consideration, the gap between the teeth of the comb, between the spread hair, regrouped, shaped, as a philosophy of the gap and of the side step, important for the artist collective Ecart, founded in the 1970s by Armleder and two friends, Claude Rychner and Patrick Lucchini. One can also think of the comb as a simplified brush, both literally « brushing », brushing but not really, to paint as to brush, a distanced, ironical gesture, far from expression and pathos, a sort of mechanised painting, which prefers the arbitrariness of dripping and the mechanics of transfer. No need for further research on artistic and linguistic metaphors, as Armleder himself prefers to keep a distance from text and analysis : « In my work, I am in favor of getting rid of the text and its constraints on comprehension. »5
For Armleder, the harvest of the combs, this action, and the leporello edition of 1979 are part of an equivalent whole, as the unused recovered sheets of this leporello will serve as the background of our two screen prints, Lézards Sauvages III and IV, (1979) 2024. Added to these three steps, the edition of a multiple, an engraved comb, once again a comb, ENCORE TROP, a sort of return to the real object, as for him « There is no gap between art and other objects». He then follows : « Art is not singular, and is absolutely not useful. Art is only inevitable. »6
Véronique Bacchetta, March 2023 (trad. Flavia Vuagniaux)
John Armleder was born in Geneva in 1948, where he lives and works. His work has been displayed in numerous solo exhibitions, such as : On ne fait pas ça, Massimo de Carlo Milano (2024) ;Experiences, Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully (2023), Pour la planète, Palais Galerie, Neuchâtel (2023), Yakety Yak, Mrac Occitanie, Sérignan (2023) ; Again, Just Again, Rockbound Art Museum, Shanghai (2021) ; « It never ends », Carte Blanche to John M Armleder, KANAL, Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2020) ; CA.CA., Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019) ; Spoons, moons and masks, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2019), Quicksand II, MAMCO, Geneva (2019) ; 360°, MADRE – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (2018) ; Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, Museion, Bolzano (2018) ; Stockage, Instituto Svizzero di Roma (2017) ; À Rebours, La Salle de Bains, Lyon(2017). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including : Monotypes, Edition VFO, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2023) ; &, MAMCO, Geneva (2022) ; Stop Painting, Fondazione Prada, Milano (2021) ; Ecart at Art Basel, MAMCO, Geneva (2019) ; Medusa – Jewellery and Taboos, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2017). In 2024, John Armleder’s work will be the subject of several solo and group exhibitions : Never-Nevermore, Lovay Fine Arts, Geneva ; Renverser la tâche, Galerie Catherine Issert, Saint-Paul-de-Vence ; Transparents, Musée Barbier-Müller, Geneva ; Galerie Elisabeth and Klaus Thomas, Innsbruck.He is represented by a number of galleries : Massimo de Carlo Gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, Almine Rech Gallery, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri. His artwork are part of permanent collections of many museums, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris ; the Museum of Modern Art, New York ; the Long Museum, Shanghai ; the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles ; the Kunstmuseum Basel ; the Fondation Museion – Museum of contemporary and modern art, Bolzano ; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
1 “Quatre entretiens avec John Armleder”, “It Never Ends”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 192. 2Ibid., p. 193. 3 Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release for John Armleder’s exhibition at the CGGC/CEC from 11 June to 18 July 1992. 4 “Point, virgule, point-virgule”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 201. 5 op.cit. p. 192. 6 Extract from a quotation by John Armleder at the beginning of the postface, Yves Goldstein, “It Never Ends (Postface)”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 190.
At the bottom of an almost dry lake, frogs are gathered around a puddle. Their movements, slowed down and almost imperceptible, bring life to this deserted landscape. A dog appears. Imposing, his body extends beyond the frame. His walk sets off a panoramic, moving shot.
Thus begins Caroline Schattling Villeval’s video When a frog meets a dog, produced for her exhibition Carences et toute-puissance1. This new piece functions as a continuation of her installation good boy (Hasch, Marseille, 2023) which revolved around the fictional text Vie/Chienne, that explores the question of domination arising from a non-consensual interaction between a person and a dog with a wandering tongue2. Once again, the animal is one of the main protagonists of Caroline Schattling Villeval’s video When a frog meets a dog, this time alongside a group of frogs.
With his massive, slender body and golden fur, the dog, animated by Caroline Schattling Villeval, moves forward in a menacing manner. He appears to be indifferent to everything, including the amphibians which have come together to stop his march. Piled up in the shape of a column, they form a mass in front of this manifestation of almighty power. The counter-power embodied in the group’s strength is swept away, pushed aside by a paw. It’s not strong enough. A crushing failure even: it’s raining frogs. They splash into the exhibition space, contaminating the room. The almighty power triumphs over the collective strength. End of the story. However, in Caroline Schattling Villeval’s work, the power dynamics also manifest themselves in an underlying manner through the technical process. A dog, frogs, a 3D-modelled bestiary bought online like one would adopt a pet: an act of domination. Then comes the computer, far from functioning autonomously as the artist manipulates her virtual puppets through an animation software. Finally, the dog, never fully visible, dominates the frogs as well as the space. The dog, the first animal species domesticated by Man – its « best friend » –, that Caroline Schattling Villeval has trained to perform its own dance. The image is replayed in a loop, but who’s calling the shots? When a frog meets a dog is a canvas onto which power dynamics are superimposed in infinite layers.
When the dog and the frogs meet, bodies blend and collide. Objects of power, they gain, or attempt to gain, the upper hand over those who oppose them. In the video No, no no healthy trust, the question of the body remains, in this case individual as well as biological. The theme of power is approached through the topic of well-being. For Caroline Schattling Villeval, the interest in care as a concept emerged through the discovery of the feminist self-help movements of the 1970s. The movement was initiated on one hand as a reaction to the masculine domination in the health system, and on another hand as a set of contemporary artistic practices which were articulated around said movement. In Europe, the Feminist Health Care Research Group, formed in 2015 in Berlin by Julia Bonn, Alice Münch and Inga Zimprich took inspiration from the West German Health Movement in order to create spaces to welcome collective research around exhibitions, workshops or zines as tools to think about and construct a more radical health system. As an empowerment process, individual education notably revolves around learning DIY practices within a communal setting, as a way to propose a collective alternative to the dominant health system.
In the video No, no no healthy trust, a small green plant agitates itself in a jerky trance. Is it the result of drug consumption within a festive setting, or maybe dietary supplements consumed to provide a daily energy boost? Regardless of whether it’s one or the other, the specter of the neoliberal economy seems to loom large. Caroline Schattling Villeval’s characters are often offbeat, submerged by a world which overflows with possibilities to get better, always better. They seem to be in a perpetual well-being quest, an investigation of happiness. Happiness, as it was formulated by Martin Seligman, co-founder of positive psychology next to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, follows a hyper-individualist logic; To reach happiness depends on one’s will to undertake a series of important actions as a way to achieve a sustainable blissful state. How convenient for capitalism! Supported by the good vibes only slogan, the wellness industry takes off in the beginning of the 2000s: happiness can be bought. Yoga, pilates, diets, detoxes, miracle morning, beauty care, meditation, self-development, spiritual retreat: so many practices that guarantee a better life, evolving at the pace of supply and demand, standardising bodies and minds while detaching them from any kind of collective commitment. Health is no longer limited to fighting diseases, and now encompasses attempts to perform better, self-optimise, compensate hypothetical deficiencies3. For one’s own sake?
Last convulsions: a wellness overdose. Nothing left from the little plant in No, no no healthy trust but a glass skeleton, similar to a relic. A safety pin and chains are used to suture the wounds on this damaged body. The remains of a life in search of happiness.
Christine Glassey (trad. Flavia Vuagniaux)
1. In parallel with her exhibition at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Caroline Schattling Villeval presents StéréoMimicryat the Salle Crosnier, Palais de l’Athénée, from January 12 to February 10, 2024. 2. Vie/Chienne was written by Caroline Schattling Villeval in 2023 for [SWISS] Weird & Magic #1, forthcoming publication by éditions Clinamen. 3. According to the WHO Constitution, which came into force in 1948, « health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. »
Born in 1995 in Zürich, Caroline Schattling Villeval lives and works in Geneva. Her work has been exhibited in various venues in Switzerland and abroad in solo shows such as : StéréoMimicry, Salle Crosnier, Geneva (12.01–10.02.2024) ; good boy, Hasch, Marseille (2023) ; No firing, with Paul Paillet, Espace 3353, Carouge (2021) ; Chiara Chiara Chiara, Zabriskie Point, Geneva (2020) ; Being fucked, Lokal-int, Biel (2020). She has also taken part in several group exhibitions, including: Basel Social Club with Joyfully waiting, Basel (2023) ; MINIMIRACLES, Sonnenstube, Lugano (2023) ; Bourses déliées – Arts Visuels, Halle Nord, Geneva (2022); Prix Kiefer Hablitzel, Art Basel, Basel (2022) Esprit d’Escalier, with Paul Paillet, Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva (2022) ; Plaisirs Minuit, Forde as part of the Fesse-tival, Geneva (2022) ; Peeping through the looking glass, Set Space, London (2021) ; Fotoromanza, Le Commun, Geneva (2021) ; Silicon Malley, Prilly (2020) ; Weaving home, Limbo Space, Geneva (2020).
Caroline Schattling Villeval’s exhibition is supported by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DCS, Geneva, and the Office fédérale de la culture, de la République et canton de Genève.
Gina Folly’s work focuses on everyday life, on the interactions between the private and public space, between the intimate and social realms. She takes a precise, ironic and subtly critical look at the objects, messages and situations that surround us on a daily basis, which she retains, photographs and isolates in order to modify them and transpose them into the field of art. This gesture of appropriation, transformation and exhibition questions their real function, their purpose and above all the epistemological impact that these ordinary materials can have on our lives. She dissects them in order to reveal their poetic and dramatic potential, and their psychological and political impact.
The objects chosen by Folly question our condition as human beings, catapulted into an often hostile and coercive society. She endeavours to highlight the intrinsic contradictions, the underlying and imperceptible violence, lurking in all the signs of power that flood the social and political space, and parasitise our lives.
Folly chooses a variety of seemingly banal objects, such as boxes, electrical circuits, chains, padlocks, light bulbs, fans, handles and locks, eyelets and pregnancy tests. She extracts them from their context, transforms or duplicates them, slightly modifying the materials, formats, colours or finish, and recombines them with other objects, accentuating the feeling of constraint, hindrance and confinement.
In 2019, she intervened in the public space for the Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel. Outside, Folly installed a large photograph of a bookshelf belonging to a friend she had stayed with. The title, Fashion, Sex and Death – Science – Sports, Gardens and Conspicuous Consumption, simply transcribes the labels that are stuck on the shelves, indicating the classification themes which group together the words “fashion” and “sex” with “death,” “sport” with “garden” and “conspicuous consumption.” Without alteration, this labelling already suggests a commentary and a political questioning. The framing of the photograph, a close-up on these few shelves, precludes an overall or interior view, accentuating the feeling of suffocation already induced by the themes chosen to arrange these books. This work is emblematic of that which underpins Gina Folly’s work and determines its critical scope.
On the occasion of this exhibition, she spoke about her work and her commitment in a discussion with Inès Goldbach, the director of the Kunsthaus Baselland and the curator of the exhibition, which appeared in the book Listening to Artists (published byédition VfmK Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2022):
“My works almost always generate from a photograph. I’m keeping a sort of diary, mostly taken with my phone. I document my daily life as an observer. They’re architectural structures, objects and social events that make our daily life easier, disrupt it, make it more complicated, or ones that I don’t understand. Especially because of that, it can become interesting to document them. These moments mostly vanish again in my archive. I go back to them when I’m working on a specific project. They result in mostly approbate objects that I reproduce and specify. These processes are about entering relationships. Be it getting to know the person who produced the object I’m attracted to, or who knows the reason of its existence, or to find the right producer to make exact replicas of the respective works.”
In 2023, for her series of photographs exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, Gina Folly opted for a simple medium-format film camera with which she photographed members of the Quasitutto association of retired people, which offers all kinds of day-to-day support services. For another project, also in Basel, she distributed small disposable cameras to a number of children, so that they could take photos of their favourite works on display at the Basel Social Club, the fair that took place during ArtBasel 2023. In these two projects, the shooting is simple, on a 1:1 scale, with no aesthetic overkill, be it in terms of the framing, image processing, gesture, intention, recording. All of these parameters remain the most important, with no stylistic effects, no aesthetic overkill, no technical, dramatic or sentimental effects. A simple document, like an image seen in “real life,” whose recording method perfectly reflects Folly’s desire to remain in the background.
This absence of pathos allows viewers to project their own feelings, memories or experiences onto these very neutral, open images. These “implicit” images create an open space for appropriation and projection. Paradoxically, they have a greater impact on viewers’ memories, making them more endearing.
The objects chosen by Folly are often not commercial products; they are made or transformed by their user for a very specific, functional, practical use; they are inexpensive, devoid of luxury or decoration. Like the fountains for refreshing coconuts that can be found on beaches. Built by the farmers themselves – a kind of DIY –, adapted to their use and made with “the means at hand.” The fountain exhibited in June 2023 at the entrance to the Basel Social Club, during ArtBasel, was the perfect replica of one them.
Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fischli and Weiss, and even Ed Ruscha have all worked in series, establishing a principle beforehand, a subject for collection, a pretext for repetition, multiplication of images or objects, made or appropriated, linked to everyday life. But whereas these artists practised a distancing, offering us a glimpse of our world through the prism a critical and necessary irony and scepticism, Gina Folly does not shy away from a compassionate dimension, in an inclusive gesture, never looking down on her subjects. By simply capturing everyday life, her environment and residual micro-events, however minute they may be, her works always bear witness to a society that is trying to maintain a precarious balance, a fairness and humanity that are so often abused. This empathy and awareness of otherness is the sign of a shift into another era.
As part of her exhibition project at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Gina Folly will be producing an edition, a series of bouquets of preserved flowers presented in cardboard boxes coated with a varnish that protects against humidity and makes the boxes shiny. Each box bears an inscription, a very short phrase found randomly on a horoscope application that predicts the day ahead: slightly simplistic aphorisms, advice, judgements or trivial, absurd prophecies, whose meaninglessness and naivety create a poetic or downright comedic effect.
The process of preserving the flowers in this edition consisted of replacing the sap with glycerine, so that the plant retains a living appearance for many years, without the need for any special care. Once the bouquet has been preserved, no external intervention is required to ensure that the plants retain their original freshness. They are protected from wilting, frozen in a state of almost eternal flowering, but their colour is transformed: the petals take on a light grey-pink tint, almost black and white. A light, subtle, refined metaphor for the passage from life to art.
Gina Folly’s second project for her exhibition at the CEC will feature a frame containing a single sachet of seeds from the “Dolce Vita” flower mix – a reference to the title of the exhibition. The name of the mixture and the brand of these seeds, SELECT, allows Folly to intuitively and emotionally put this existential and philosophical question into perspective. What determines our choices, be they individual or collective? How does this infinite multitude of choices – from belief in chance, to the notion of the preconditioned unconscious, from chaos to consciousness and freedom of choice – influence our paths and our lives?
Gina Folly was born in Zurich in 1983. She lives and works between Basel and Paris. In recent years she has presented several solo exhibitions, including: Autofokus. Manor Kunstpreis 2023, Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, Basel (2023); Solo presentation, Ermes Ermes, Paris Internationale, Paris (2019); Fashion, Sex and Death – Science – Sports, Gardens and Conspicuous Consumption, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2019). Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions such as: CITY SALTS: THE GINA SHOW, Salts, Basel (2022); WHIMSIES, Essener Kunstverein, Essen (2022); THINK, AND THEN THINK AGAIN, Sgomento Zurigo, Zurich (2022); ORCA – Duo-Show with Philipp Timischl, Fondation Fiminco, Paris (2021); PRK-1U, Tonus, Paris (2021); A Part, Kunstkredit, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2020); Reality Companions, Motto Berlin, Berlin (2020); Groupshow, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2019); life and limbs, Swiss Institute, New York (2019).
Gina Folly’s exhibition is supported by Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation and Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture.
Biennale di Veneziávs. Karim Benzema Invited by Véronique Bacchetta vs. Federico Santiago Valverde Dipetta Other People’s Clothes vs. Rodrygo Goes Étudiants aux Beaux Arts vs. Eden Hazard Uber Triennale Curatior vs. Vinicius Paixao de Oliveira Junior Crits’n’Reviews vs. Toni Kroos Caravaggio’s Chiaroscuro vs. Jesus Vallejo Lazaro Your Artist Fee vs. Aurélien Tchouaméni Mille Plateaux vs. Eder Gabriel Militão RM’s Instagram Erotic vs. Luka Modric Artistas Unidos Vámonos vs. Daniel Carvajal Ramos
Until the End, Come on Real.
A Play (Off) by Miriam Laura Leonardi, April 2023
SOLO TÚ RM at CEC 2023
Until last summer we used to go by a name written Real Madrid, pronounced either rɪəl məˈdrɪd, or ře’al ma’ðrid. After legal threats by a namesake company we had to disown that moniker and disclose being unpatented knockoffs. It was a matter of ticking time, of who trademarked facts first and once – for the moment we use the shortened RM but pronunciation stays unaltered. We want this show to be an unbaptism, a debut against copyrighted one-off geniuses, an and to a story, a stack of counterfeit merch and a spoonful of the shared minestrone of ideas, and also another unoriginal show about identity.
The b/w images you see have been taken by Mathilde Agius.
RM
The RM’s exhibition is supported by Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation and the City of Geneva.
In 2021, the Centre d’édition contemporaine published New York & Beyond, 2017-2019, which brings together a selection of the artist’s works presented in the United States or Europe, as well as photographic memories of lived situations, encounters and intimate family moments. So many memories captured by Liz Craft and her entourage between 2017 and 2019. The 40-page brochure, a kind of diary in images, covers the three years that the artist spent in New York.
Liz Craft, New York & Beyond, 2017 – 2019, publication, digital printing, colour, 40 pages, 15 x 21.2 cm, 500 copies, stapled binding. Text: Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue (English). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2021.
As a follow-up to the publication, the CEC has invited Liz Craft to create a new exhibition, which will take place from November 5th, 2022, to February 3rd, 2023.
For this exhibition, Ms. America, Liz Craft will be creating a new installation composed of a group of about twenty figurines of different sizes, in the image of Pac-Man, the character from the Japanese video game created in 1980. Probably inspired by the smileys of the 60s, it was used in the 90s by rave culture, including Aphex Twin aka Power-Pill, which is just as yellow as our contemporary emoji’s. If video games like “Space Invaders”, which involved killing aliens and aggressive invaders in a warlike atmosphere, Pac-Man, invented to attract women and increase the number of players, features a small, seemingly harmless, bright yellow glutton in the shape of a pizza missing a slice, who continuously devours small lozenges whilst being stuck in a maze and attacked by relentless ghosts. But what are we to make of this hero, who met with phenomenal success in the West, and especially in the United States, by being constantly hungry, insatiable, permanently dissatisfied and condemned to a state of perpetual failure? How to interpret this voracious little being, endlessly consuming, a non-stop seeker of instant gratification, experiencing short phases of pleasure thanks to a magic gum, forever forced to start over in its crazy consumer race, in a never-ending acceleration? And thus, our cute Pac-Man is turned into a compulsive consumer, totally addicted to sugar, pharmaceuticals, and drugs, caught in the net of the “always more” proposed by the great capital, be it legal or illegal.
The Pac-Man of Liz Craft and Ms. America have fittingly big yellow heads adorned with big red bows and are wrapped in a big black tunic. Presented as a group, they oscillate between a howling choir and a cult of furious, grotesque, and menacing madmen, begging to be released from this hell.
Liz Craft (1970, Los Angeles) lives and works in Berlin. Her exhibitions have included those at the Real Fine Arts Gallery, New York, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, Jenny’s, Los Angeles, and at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt between 2015 and 2022. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, such as: Cavern, at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2022); Do You Love Me Now? at the Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum, Bremerhaven (2022); Escape From NewYork at the baby Company, New York (2019); QUERELA at the Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon (2019); Watching You Watching Me at Jenny’s Gallery, London (2018). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Kreislaufprobleme at Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019), Tranted Loveat Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Sueurs Chaudes at South Way Studio, Marseille (2017); Medusa. Bijoux et tabous at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2017).
« … Souvent, il séjournait dans cet espace pour trouver le calme et l’inspiration. Dans un carnet, il prenait des notes accompagnées de croquis et de plans pour de futurs projets. Les murs blancs de la maison, la vue sur le jardin et les arbres étaient propices à la méditation et parfois à la lecture. Il pensait qu’un moine jardinier aurait pu se retrouver dans la même situation que lui, à l’écart du monde, du vacarme et des brutales réalités de la vie. Ces murs laiteux ressemblaient à ceux d’une chapelle. Par un jour de printemps, il décida de peindre de petites saynètes et des paysages directement sur ces parois immaculées. … »
Extract from the text by Paul Viaccoz, ESPRIT ES-TU LÀ ?, published in Before publication 5, éd. CEC, 2021.
During the Nineties, when Elise was at school in the English countryside, there was a constant flow of UFO sightings and crop circles, in which complicated but harmonious patterns of spiralling orbs would appear cut into wheat fields overnight, and reports of ethereal abductions on lonely country roads. These abductions were usually in the United States, and again happened overnight. Aliens would come down and snatch American men and sodomize them, for their experiments. The Nineties were fantastic, she thought. Now that old sense of excitement about and openness to the cosmos was gone. There were no more lights in the sky, no more encounters of any kind. No more geometry appeared on the farms. Steel monoliths sometimes arrived on Romanian hillsides and deserts. But no one thought about space anymore. What was space good for now?
Paul Paillet’s solo exhibition at the Centre d’édition contemporaine was intended to open in March 2020, but was postponed due to lockdown until September 2020. For this exhibition, Paul Paillet has developed a proposal drawing on numerous references that insect and overlap, creating an ensemble of several pieces: sculptures and a mural work in porcelain, a newspaper, a radio and a publication. Each of these elements contains various cultural and personal indices that construct a kind of staged presentation. The theme of fascination for fire is partly autobiographical, linked to a reflection on a return to the artist’s adolescence, his adventures and darker moments in his past, which result in semantic shifts, from the private sphere to more critical and committed societal and political implications. Continue reading “Paul Paillet Fascination for fire“
Fabian Marti sees his artistic work as a chance to explore ideas about the place of the artist and the individual in society and in the field of production. This type of questioning, which brings him closer to conceptual art, allows Marti to view his practice as a way of challenging the divides between traditional techniques, conventional modes of creation, customary terms of exchange right through to the artist’s status. He goes back to more archaic technical choices, and the handmade in particular, reappropriating craft skills such as ceramics. As for the shift in the artist’s function, Marti is involved and participates in the creation of exhibition spaces, artists’ studios and publishing houses. The Zurich space Hacienda, TwoHotel, Marti Collection, Marti Ceramics and FM Studio Chairs are simultaneously both art objects and small “companies”, places or structures that facilitate production projects, both for Fabian Marti himself and for invited artists. Continue reading “Fabian Marti Such a Good Girl“
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s primary medium might be painting, but it often goes beyond two-dimensional space to extend to its surroundings, becoming decor or pieces of furniture. This expansion of the pictorial space is seen both in the choice of subjects and in the enlarged and repeated stylized motifs. His large format paintings, often installed like decorative tapestries, wall panels or suspended ceilings, stages the exhibition space in which viewers are physically immersed. This highly spatial and physical approach to painting expresses Lutz-Kinoy’s special relationship with the body and gesture, and explains the extension of his work into dance and performance. For his recent exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon, a vast system of murals, inspired by François Boucher’s painted panels that once decorated a boudoir and are now displayed at the Frick Collection in New York, entirely covered the walls of this white cube. This fascination with the refined, sophisticated and carnal painting of the 18th century brought out its erotic and transgressive nature against a backdrop of sensual and sexual liberation.
For his exhibition at the CEC, Victor Man invites Navid Nuur not so much to create a common work but rather to establish a dialog and to underline a certain kinship between their artistic practices: their use of traditional and handcrafted techniques – watercolour for the one and ceramics for the other -, their common references to materials that bear strong symbolic and poetic meaning – minerals, water, fire -, their personal and artistic background, but also their ties to childhood, to memory and perhaps to nostalgia. A shared way of revisiting the significant initiatory stages that rendered this duo possible and natural, offering an installation alternating the watercolours of Victor Man and the ceramics of Navid Nuur. Continue reading “Entrelacs Victor Man invites Navid Nuur”
Presentation of the edition offered to the 2017 members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association
Jonathan Monk, Directional Advice, one colour silkscreen print with clear varnish coating, Algro Screen cardboard 1260 g/m2, Ø 40 cm, edition of 150, signed and dated on the reverse, printed by Christian Humbert-Droz, Geneva, die-cut by Decoform, Geneva. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2017. Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2017.
+
Editions by Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, François Curlet, Jason Dodge, Sylvie Fleury, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Hominal, Tobias Kaspar, Jakob Kolding, Oscar Tuazon, Oriol Vilanova, Jean-Michel Wicker, Heimo Zobernig
Saturday and Sunday November 11 and 12, 2017
11 AM – 6 PM
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Itinerant presentation of the facsimile of the publication Les plaintifs, les bêtes, les politiques
Signing session in the presence of Thomas Hirschhorn
Saturday November 11, 2017 from 1 PM
Thomas Hirschhorn, Les plaintifs, les bêtes, les politiques, offset printed brochure, CMYK color model, glossy coated paper, 80 g/m2, 231 × 24 cm, 208 pages. Original edition by Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine/Centre d’édition contemporaine (CEC), Geneva, 1995 and edition of the facsimile, ed. Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, 2017.
From 6 PM Presentation of Jean-Michel Wicker’s edition, #picturebook1, artist’s book, offset, 27 × 28.5 cm, 396 pages, including 360 pages in colour and 36 pages in black on LuxoArt Silk 150 g/m2 paper, glossy colour cover, LuxoArt Silk 350 g/m2, 10 inserts, colours, 26.5 × 28 cm, LuxoArt Silk 130 g/m2, publication of an arbre de vie produced by Jean-Michel Wicker in collaboration with Marlie Mul, a text by Harry Burke, and a recipe for Alsatian plum pie by Charlotte Wicker (French), English, an edition of 500. Graphic design: Maximage Société Suisse, London. Printing: DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg, Altenburg. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, June 2017.
For this exhibition, Jakob Kolding will be proposing a scenography reminiscent of 19th century dioramas or the photomontages of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, a small theatre that will fill all our exhibition spaces and be visible from outside, both as an installation and a public artwork. Several scaled up or down “standing” silhouettes will be grouped on this stage set, creating an interplay of juxtapositions and gaps. Each figure suggests a historical or anonymous person, illustrative of Jakob Kolding’s extended vocabulary of literary, philosophical, artistic or personal references, and encouraging a sociological, cultural and aesthetic interrogation of the use of space. While in his earlier works this critical research was more closely linked to the phenomena of the transformation of urban space and gentrification, Kolding has more recently approached different concepts of space in a broader, more open and ambivalent way, as areas where questions of identity are simultaneously complex, shifting and multiple. Continue reading “Jakob Kolding The Outside or the Inside of the Internalised Externalised“
Jean-Michel Wicker’s exhibition BBiblioteca ffanafffantastica brings together several works involving the medium of print for which the artist has worked out a number of iterations, including fanzines, scrapbooks, antibooks, book-objects, and flyers. The display will also feature supports, both literal and figurative, that have something to do with books, and other elements that extend the gesture of consultation, reading and writing, even the function of storage. This includes bookcases, display stands, showcases, tables and chairs. Other objects or useful ordinary materials like electric wires, clothing, key rings, neon lights, lamps and tarps will be transformed, cobbled together, and combined with a wide range of supports in their usual and unsurprising form or reappropriated and put to other uses. Those supports include paper, cardboard, plastic, papier-mâché, and shells. Continue reading “Jean-Michel Wicker BBiblioteca ffanafffantastica“
Valentin Carron explores the principle of reality through acts of appropriation, replicating almost identically elements from popular culture, the practice of monument-making, daily life and his immediate environment. The shift in meaning is probably due more to the choice of referents than to their mere displacement in the field of art. Carron conceals the function, blunts the decorative aspect and revisits the craftsmanship-like manufacturing of these objects that oscillate between irony, affection and fascination and seem to densify as entering in contact with art, endorsing themselves with a common acknowledgement and with the nostalgia of a forgotten story. Continue reading “Valentin Carron Deux épaisseurs un coin“
Mathis Gasser draws upon and combines thousands of images that he patiently gathered and arranged in a personal archive. Their references come from the arts, architecture, cinema, comics, science fiction, magazines or from current events. In a very elaborated practice of collage, thousands of signs collide and are multiplied in an explosive combination, in a mirror or imbricating effect, diffracted by the immateriality of the digital world and by the invasion of information. The impact that Gasser seeks for through this body of reappropriated, reassociated images that are frequently reworked through drawing and painting, and caught in a sustained and invasive turnover. They oscillate between a nihilistic vision and an interrogation of the limits of a world undermined by temptations of archaism and the resurgence of primal fears, sectarian deliriums, theories of conspiracy and hyper technological and futuristic extravaganzas and other prophecies. Continue reading “Mathis Gasser Sept sont tombés vers le ciel Works on paper”
For his exhibition at the CEC, David Maljkovic will create, in collaboration with the German designer Konstantin Grcic, a series of works called Negatives. The “negatives” began with Maljkovic’s Temporary Projections in 2011. For this project, the artist created a fictional studio as a projection and one of the elements in the studio was a ‘fake’ working table. In collaboration with Grcic, the table is now an actual object, and what was once a secondary element becomes a model and the focus of the work. The “negatives”, then, are tables designed by Grcic that Maljkovic transforms by using as a work surface. As the artist cuts into paper with a blade, he leaves slashes and marks on the soft surface of the table top. The result is a group of intersecting lines and marks that combine to make a geometric abstraction. Red ink is then applied to this surface, and paper applied, in a process that resembles printmaking, leaving the table top marks filled with a vibrant red. The ‘negative’ is this structure that provided a space for the edition-making process. Continue reading “David Maljkovic with Konstantin Grcic Negatives“
Opening Thursday September 18, 2014 from 6 PM
on the occasion of the Nuit des Bains
Exhibition from September 19 till November 29, 2014
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Exhibition of an installation of large pencil drawings on paper scroll and mobile wire sculptures, and the edition of an artist’s book entitled RREPTILES produced and edited by the CEC.
Raphaël Julliard is a polygraphic artist. Whether it be drawing, painting, installation work, video or performance, his work, rather than departing from a predefined idea or concept, stems from an initial impulsion that is as free and autonomous as possible, in order to arrive at the configuration induced by that same idea and its process of realisation. His work sometimes also questions the works of other artists, may them be central figures or lesser known. However, he seems to be inspired by everyday banal little things, whose existence is, in theory, considered to be insignificant. Like so, he had proceeded to the making of a classical ham-butter sandwich, from the planting of the seeds to the devouring of the sandwich, including the slaughtering of the pig and the churning of the butter (Mon Sandwich, HD video, 2010). Continue reading “Raphaël Julliard Chromozone“
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
The artist as collector, Oriol Vilanova is a collector of postcards, this touristy and obsolete medium of communication that contains within itself traces of individual and collective memory. Images d’Epinal, pictures of monuments, of iconic and historical places, printed on a simple card, thus offering an idealised vision of the world, filled with nostalgia, and unchanging subjects, yet they testify of a time hopelessly lost. Oriol Vilanova often works with notions of individual and collective memory, of lost time, of the immortality of the iconic and heroic figure, of monuments and stereotypes re-enacting through writing, performance or installation an extensive visual documentation—films, publications, printed matter, postcards—and thus creating a collision and a temporal coming and going between past, present and future. Continue reading “Oriol Vilanova Renoncer à te décrire“
An installation of four silkscreen prints and a sound piece, as well as a new publication, Through the Windows.
David Hominal manipulates images that often come from his personal archive, from the press or more largely images with historical or political references. He proceeds by free associations that mix flashbacks that are as much linked to current events as to intense personal experiences or to his literary and cinematographic keenness. He makes freely figurative or abstract painting. The subjects are treated in a graphical manner, in a rapid and immediate style that borrows more from photography, advertisement and the press than from painting itself. Continue reading “David Hominal Through The Windows“
JM: « For a little book that I just made with Galerie Yvon Lambert, The Making of Ten Posters, Ten Languages, Ten Colours, Ten Words, Ten Euros, we asked the printers if they would photograph their process. Actually, it started with a poster project that we had printed in Riga. Without us asking anything, the printers sent us photographs of the posters coming out of the press and of the printers holding them up. Upon seeing these pictures, we thought it would be perfect to make a book out of them. It’s really simple, basically to just show how the printers made the posters. But then we decided to ask the printers of the book, in Montreuil, to take pictures. We sent them a Polaroid camera and they agreed to document their whole process of making the book.» Continue reading “Jonathan Monk Egg“
Exhibition from June 22 until October 27, 2012 Opening on Thursday, June 21, 2012, from 6pm
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon or the liberating potential of construction
The work of Oscar Tuazon seems to be a natural extension of childhood, as obvious as building a wooden hut or exploring the forest. Tuazon never goes into architecture, he always stays below construction rules, safeguarding the freedom of building, by instinct, for the pleasure of taking possession of a place that would become for a while his living space, his home. Building as an extension of one’s self, of one’s body and movements. The gesture and the process of assembling are part of his pieces that must be understood as forms of appropriation, of experimentation, of « real-life » experiences. In an interview published in his catalogue I can’t see, Tuazon explains: « I want to make something with its own life, its own needs, a living thing. »Continue reading “Oscar Tuazon”
Exhibition from March 30 until May 5, 2012 Opening on Thursday, March 29, 2012, from 6 pm Performance on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 8 pm, Chapelle de Saint-Léger, 20 rue Saint-Léger, 1204 Geneva
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Coming from the counterculture, Jeffrey Vallance (born in 1955, lives and works in Reseda/Los Angeles)is a Californian artist who revisits religious rituals, folklore and fetishist practices. While he slips in turn into the clothes of an ambassador, an anthropologist, an explorer, a writer, a professor or an investigator in paranormal phenomena, Vallance remains a compulsive collector whose stock-in-trade is nourished by personal and collective mythologies. Influenced by his forebear Emil Knudsen (1872–1956), famous Norwegian medium, he strongly believes in the part inspiration plays in his work, often perceived as a conversation with the hereafter. He thus turns his everyday life into an enchanted world, open to acts of faith, mysteries and revelations.
From December 9, 2011 to february 11, 2012 Opening on December 8, 2011
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison is an artist particularly engaged in the field of edition. His artistic work comes as a wide range of reflections on the book and the object. He can be printer, typographer, editor and of course artist at the same time. He often works by assemblage and combinations: a piece of furniture, a poster or a publication which all push the link between representation, production, functionality, presentation and distribution to the edges of its simplicity, its obviousness and its impact. Each object merges technical and aesthetic potential and conceptual accuracy. Aaron Flint Jamison is between the artist and the technician, between the craftsman and the inventor. Continue reading “Aaron Flint Jamison”
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Like the spectator of a 3D cinema, Philippe Decrauzat’s work slides with mastery from one dimension to another. With wallpaintings and floorpaintings, shaped canvases, installations and light displays, we sway between scientific rigour and the vibrant effect of the red-blue spectacles. Whilst encompassing the legacy of abstraction as in Contructivism and Suprematism, in Op Art and its games of illusion as well as in Minimalism, his work shows a much wider interest for the origins of abstraction. Continue reading “Philippe Decrauzat NYSTAGMUS“
Gerard Byrne’s work is structured around documents – advertisements, daily papers, specialized magazines – dating from after the Second World War, generally from the 1960s and 1970s. After researching archives, Byrne uses these often fragmented and forgotten documents, transforms them and gives them a second life. The new images and settings that emerge from the joined processes of critical deconstruction and reconstruction, often dramatized, examine the codes of artistic or media images and those of representation. Continue reading “Gerard Byrne For example; a sketch of Five Elevations, 1971-72“
From November 5, 2010, until February 5, 2011 Opening on November 4, 2010, from 6pm
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
Céramiques et porcelaines Made in West Germany, 1960-1980 With a sound piece by Seth Price
For the beginning of the month of November 2010 with the exhibition of a collection of historical ceramics from the 1960s – 1980s, we will be crossing from the field of art into the field of the object, nevertheless not fully abandoning the first one to the second. Almost a hundred pieces covering different styles and production processes will let us discover through a utilitarian and decorative object the different aesthetic variations of a prolific and stylistically free period, when common taste allowed itself to be kitsch and delirious. An era before the supremacy of design that is going to format most of our daily objects. The exhibition, entitled « Sgrafo vs Fat Lava, Ceramics and Porcelains Made in West Germany, 1960-1980 », is accompanied by a little book published for the occasion by JRP/Ringier (Zurich) in its « Hapax » series : Sgrafo vs Fat Lava.Continue reading “Sgrafo vs Fat Lava Céramiques et porcelaines Made in West Germany, 1960-1980″
April 23 – June 26, 2010
Opening on April 22, 2010, 6pm
Susanne M. Winterling, view of the exhibition They Call Each Other Horses
Susanne M. Winterling likes revisiting different figures of Art History, architects or intellectuals of the 20th century, mostly from its beginning. She admires and is inspired by the work of artists such as Berenice Abbott, Eileen Gray, Edward Krasinski, Le Corbusier or Annemarie Schwarzenbach, artistic fiction-figures from another world, a world that witnessed the birth of modernity.
As Mark Prince states in his Frieze article [n° 126, October 2009, …of Mice and Blood, (for E.K.), review of the Berlin exhibition at the gallery Lüttgenmeijer, where Susanne M. Winterling pays tribute to the Polish artist Edward Krasinski (1925-2004) with a display of objects and an environment inspired by a series of photographies taken in his atelier, preserved in its last state by the Warsaw Foksal Gallery (that Edward Krasinski cofounded in 1966)] : « Where the installation is more than the sum of its allusions, it manages to translate the irreducible particularities of another artist’s life and work into Winterling’s own language, like a dreamy adolescent who absorbs the image of a pop star into the private universe of her bedroom. »Continue reading “Susanne M. Winterling They Called Each Other Horses“
Sans titre
15 lithographs, black, on BFK Rives 300gm2 paper, 80 x 65 cm, edition of 4 plus 1 A.P. and 1 H.C., numbered, dated and signed.
Heimo Zobernig, born in 1958 in Mauthen (Austria), lives and works in Vienna.
Exhibition from June 19 to October 10, 2009 Opening: Thursday, June 18, 2009, from 6 pm
Erik van Lieshout, view of the exhibition The Assistant
Erik van Lieshout is one of Holland’s most prominent artists and is best known for his installations and videos. Nevertheless, he regularly paints and above all draws. He finds his inspiration in urban culture, its sociocultural melting-pot and its violence and has no qualms about immersing himself for long explorations into non-place zones – like the outer suburbs and frontiers with no real identity – and losing himself, setting himself adrift in unrestrained, openly depressed self-scrutiny verging at times on the morbid and a state of crisis. These overplayed, uninhibited and often provocative autobiographical events are put across with humour and intensity in a continuous, inextinguishable production, punctuated by drawings and collages, which represents the free, direct expression of repressed feelings and holds up an emancipating mirror for all our introspection and past experience. Continue reading “Erik van Lieshout The Assistant“
Opening : Thursday October 9, 2008, from 6pm Exhibition from October 10 to December 4, 2008 Finissage (with the presence of the artist) : Thursday, December 4, 2008, from 6pm
Trisha Donnelly, view of the exhibition
Trisha Donnelly, view of the exhibition
While Trisha Donnelly produces drawings, photographs, videos as well as sound pieces and performances, she doesn’t just decline techniques. Instead, the different mediums she uses are reservoirs of reflections. Even the space and time of the exhibition are seen by the artist as receptacles of references – historical, geographical, symbolical and spiritual -, of associations of ideas and reminiscences. Rather than thinking of Trisha Donnelly’s works as mysterious and impenetrable, one should see them as attempts to escape the constraints of the production and materialisation of any object and to go beyond the spatial and temporal limitations of the exhibition. Maybe Trisha Donnelly is just not where we think she is? Continue reading “Trisha Donnelly”
Olivier Bardin, view of the exhibition You belong to me I belong to you
Olivier Bardin’s exhibitions challenge the image of the person. Visitors are invited into an empty exhibition space, and the show really commences as the artist asks them to become the only pictures to be seen. Thus, the self-image is the real object of the exhibition. The apparatus reveals the way this image is built up from the other people’s perception; spectators, at the same time, are watching and being watched. Eventually, they constitute a community based on mutual confidence, where perception acts as a self-balancing device. Continue reading “Olivier Bardin You belong to me I belong to you“
Exhibition from October 13 to December 16, 2007
Opening on Friday October 12, 2007 (from 6 pm)
Anne-Julie Raccoursier, view of the exhibition Wireless World
Anne-Julie Raccoursier, view of the exhibition Wireless World
Anne-Julie Raccoursier, view of the exhibition Wireless World
Anne-Julie Raccoursier, view of the exhibition Wireless World
It is a well-known fact that Finns are not afraid of anything. They often love unusual sport events: mobile throwing Olympics, wife carrying contests, mosquito killing competitions, sauna world championships. In the same spirit, every year, not far from the Polar circle, is held the Air Guitar World Championships to which Anne-Julie Raccoursier has dedicated a video work. Entitled Noodling (2006, 7’20’’), it reveals, in close-up, stylish contestants, unlikely clones of Frank Zappa or Billy Idol. They ape the gestures of these musicians at the climax of their shows. The state of exaltation of the candidates is tempered by the absence of soundtrack. An additional distance is created between them and us: in slow motion, their gestures, sometimes hidden out of shot, seem loaded with affect and could equally suggest (solitary) pleasure or pain, ecstasy or hysteria. Continue reading “Anne-Julie Raccoursier Wireless World, BAC, Genève”
Exhibition from April 20 to June 3, 2007
Opening on Thursday April 19, 2007 (from 6 pm)
Markus Schinwald, view of the exhibition
Markus Schinwald, view of the exhibition
Markus Schinwald, view of the exhibition
Markus Schinwald (born in Salzburg in 1973 ; lives and works in Vienna) is an artist whose work is protean and has no hierarchy of genres. Inspired by the worlds of fashion, dance or opera, and more broadly by that of entertainment, he moves easily from performance to film, from photography to clothes making. His heelless pumps (Low Heels, 1998) or his snakeskin sneakers (Snakers, 1998) – fetishistic objects par excellence – suggest a subtler conditioning of the body. Markus Schinwald’s universe wavers between that of Lynch, Cronenberg and Chalayan, and the clothes he designs can become instruments of constraint, transform themselves into prosthesis, and even replace the body. This dividing, or dual body, expresses hidden fantasies and brings to the surface the intricacy of our subconscious depth. Continue reading “Markus Schinwald, BAC, Genève”
February 2, 2007 – April 1, 2007
Opening: Thursday February 1, 2007, from 6 pm
Andreas Dobler, view of the exhibition In Deep Ink
Andreas Dobler, view of the exhibition In Deep Ink
Andreas Dobler, view of the exhibition In Deep Ink
The approach of Andreas Dobler (b. 1963, Zurich) is characterized by frequent incursions into varied domains such as fanzine illustration, tie-dye, China ink on paper, hard rock or ambient music, as well as screenwriting for films and the stage. Even though painting remains his favored activity, he is still very much interested in drawing. His universe oscillates between oppressive representations, often borrowed from sci-fi imagery, psychedelic culture, the esthetics of comics, petit bourgeois kitsch or exoticism for tourists.
A digital clock, recently installed on the fronton of the Tokyo Palace entrance chimes the 5 billion year countdown, which separates us from the explosion of the sun and therefore the end of all life on earth. Big Crunch Clock (1999) reminds us of the inexorable end of all things. A cake of soap made from extra fat recovered after Silvio Berlusconi’s liposuction in a Swiss plastic surgery clinic: Mani pulite (2005). The first cake of Berlusconi’s soap brand which washes whiter than white? What about the replica of the American flag which was erected on the moon (Tranquility Base, 1999) once transposed in the space of White Cube? Should we see the poetic nevertheless absurd conquest of emptiness or of contemporary art? We might as well be shooting for the moon! Yet the commemorative tablet of the 759 Guantanamo victims (The Victims of Guantanamo Bay (Memorial), 2006), prisoners, or rather hostages, parked in a space without rights, literally removed from society’s awareness.
Exhibition from February 3 to March 18, 2006
Opening on February 2, 2006, from 6pm
Marie Velardi, Vue 9 (deux eaux)
Launching the French and English editions – Future Perfect, 21st Century – recounting the history of the 21st century from anticipatory texts and scenarios.
40 x 500 cm
French and English versions
With the collaboration of Pedro Jiménez Morrás for the translation and Gidon Mead, Frédéric Favre, Céline Mangeat, Francesca Whitman for the rereading.
Exhibition from October 28 till December 17, 2005
Opening on October 27, 2005 from 6pm
Christophe Rey presentation of the exhibition at 7.15pm
Christophe Rey, Ocean Bluff
Christophe Rey is an artist who is particularly interested in photography and its history as well as in the cinema, architecture and literature. His long journeys – preferably across Canada or the United States – have enabled him to build up an extensive photographic archive which provides him with a major source of inspiration for his writing. His texts, often concise, express deep introspection. Yet, without restricting himself to a purely autobiographical approach, the artist’s keen eye goes far beyond mere ‘impressions of a journey’ and is infused with a social, moral or political awareness drawn mostly from the very heart of cities. Continue reading “Christophe Rey Ocean Bluff“
Opening: October 28 2004, 6pm
Exhibition from October 29 2004 through January 29 2005
Florian Pumhösl, view of the exhibition Héliogravures et film
In one of the last Florian Pumhösl’s movie, Untitled (Mixed Exhibits), images of a deserted city slowly unfold in a strangely timeless mood of expectation, threat and ending. The viewer is taken, by a slide show succession of dissolving images, from the outside walls of a huge fortress to a wild courtyard; in the back a motionless isolated Cyclops sits in semi-obscurity. Led back out to the open, the viewer then finds himself at ground level, in the mist of stone and concrete blocks. He gets transported abruptly from the artificially stone paved winter garden to the outside barren stone yard. Shown in a long barely moving frame, authentic outside stone blocks seem to acquire a sort of mineral density. Their radically motionless material aspect alludes back to the Cyclops, and encloses the viewer into a timeless, frozen like surreal space. Continue reading “Florian Pumhösl Héliogravures et film“
Summer presentation from the 22nd of June to the 25th of September 2004
Opening time : Tues-Fri 2-6 pm / Sa 2-5 pm
Annual closure: from the 26th of July until the 23rd of August 2004
M/M (Paris), view of the exhibitionPour hoM/Me, printemps-été 2004
pour hoM/Me, Printemps Été 2004, Serie of 6 posters, silkscreen four colors, 120 x 176 cm, 25 issues of each, coedition Cneai (Chatou/Paris) and Centre d’édition contemporaine Center of contemporary edition (Geneva).
M/M presents a “new” collection of clothes, integral and technoid uniforms. Six models dressed up with integrated tools offering to their owners greater possibilities of communication and autonomy.
Exhibition from April 9 to June 12, 2004
Opening reception Thursday April 8, 2004, from 6 pm
Mai-Thu Perret, vue de l’exposition Love thy sister like thyself
Since 1999, Mai-Thu Perret invents the story of an utopian and autonomous community, situated in New Mexico, which is strictly made up of women. New Ponderosa Year Zero already exists in different forms, those of a text-manifest, diaries, objects produced by this community : furniture, decorative elements, sculptures, clothes and party’s decor as well as events’ residues which testify the existence and the organization of the everyday life of this microsociety. This imaginary world gives the artist the possibility to invent a society, its story and its organization and to project her fantasies, her comments whether they are of a social or political nature, putting together reality and fiction just as her pleases her. This work’s structure allows Mai-Thu Perret to play different roles : artist, director, novelist. More seriously, this is also maybe a way of thinking about the reconstruction of a ethic, a search for lost idealism or a new form of commitment.
OpeningJanuary 29thfrom 18:00at the Centre d’édition contemporaine(cec) Exhibition fromJanuary 30 toMarch 27, 2004 open Tuesdayto Fridayfrom 14h to 18hand Saturdayfrom 14h to 17h
Haroutioun Simonian, view of the exhibition, cec, 2004
HarutyunSimonian(lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia) will present at the cec,videotestimony of aperformance achievedin camera andpreviouslytransformed intoa private theater, a sort of black boxwhose interiorcoated with vaselineismade impassable. This actionbetweenbody artand dance,putthe artist in aconstantimbalance,always at the limitof the fall.
Thisbodyisloss of balanceHarutyunSimonian use it as a metaphorandcomment on thedisorientationbothpolitical, cultural and identity, consequential moralvacuum left bythe end of theSovietauthoritarian political system.
Exhibition from march the 28th to may the 10th, 2003
Opening march the 27th, from 6 pm
Jakob Kolding, view of the exhibition
Editions Posters, artist’s publication,briefcase with 18 folded prints, streetview photos of the posters, several texts in french/english : an artist’ text, a selection of past projects’ texts, a text of Doreen Massey, geographer, french translations of posters’ texts, 21 x 29,7 cm, offset, black/white, on paper couché demi-mat blanc 115 gm2, briefcase couché semi mat white 300 gr, 22 x 30,5 cm, 700 copies, edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2003.
Poster, offset, black/white, on paper affiche couché blanc brillant, 135 gm2, 60 x 84 cm, 700 copies, unnumbered, undated and unfirmed, edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2003. Continue reading “Jakob Kolding”
Amy O’Neill and Emmanuel Piguet, view of the exhibition Dm-Melkenburg
Presentation of Amy O’Neill’s (US/GE) and Emmanuel Piguet’s (GE) edition: dm-melkenburg (death match-melkenburg) realized within the 2001 Prize of the CEC. This edition is in reality a virtual one, consisting of a computer card with a fighting game to be played in networks or on the internet. The environment of the game reconstitutes the death row of an American prison.
Exhibition from January 26, 2001 till March 30, 2002
Opening January 25, 2002
Monica Bonvicini, view of the exhibition Bonded Eternmale
Monica Bonvicini (born in 1965 in Venice, lives and works in Berlin)
First presentation of Monica Bonvicini’s new publication, on the occasion of her two shows in Switzerland : bad bed bud pad bet pub at the Kunsthaus Glarus (Summer 2000) and Bonded Eternmale at the Centre d’édition contemporaine. Eternmale, publication with 13 reproductions of collages from the series Drawings for Eternmale (2000) and an interview of Monica Bonvicini by Beatrix Ruf, offset print on white opaque Patinata paper, 200gm2, colour, 14 pages bound together by a metal spiral, 50 x 60 cm (same size as Pirelli calendars), edition of 1000, co-edited by Kunsthaus Glarus and Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2002.
Monica Bonvicini transforms our venue into a living room with brutal design, characterized by virile aesthetics but not lacking critical humour.
Opening May 3rd at 6 pm
Exposition from May 4th to June 23rd 2001
Fabrice Gygi, outside view of the exhibition VITRINES et PITON UNIVERSEL
Fabrice Gygi is an artist from Geneva who has become increasingly important on the contemporary art scene over the past few years in Switzerland, and more recently, abroad. His work has been shown in various group–Nonchalance, Centre PasquArt, Bienne, Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer, Kunsthaus Zurich, Dogdays are Over, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, Xn00, Espace des Arts, Chalon-sur-Saône–and solo exhibitions–at the Centre d’Art de Neuchâtel, and at the Magasin-Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Grenoble. He has also produced works for public spaces on the occasion of Over the Edges in Ghent, in Fribourg at the invitation of the Kunsthalle and in Bienne during Transfer. His pieces are also regularly on view at galleries Bob von Orsouw in Zurich and Chantal Crousel in Paris. Continue reading “Fabrice Gygi VITRINES et PITON UNIVERSEL“
Vidya Gastaldon (born in 1974 in Besançon, lives and works in Geneva)
Jean-Michel Wicker (born in 1970 in Mulhouse, lives and works in London)
Exhibition of a new piece and presentation of the edition Chromolux Landscape, 2000, silkscreen prints
On 13 December 1999 in the evening at Forde, space for contemporary art, Geneva.
Klat, Evil Talk: Beyond the pleasure principle, 1999
Concert-installation for the presentation of the edition Evil Talk with organ concerto played by Julien Cupelin and bar where Jägermeister was served .
KLAT, EVIL TALK, poster, silkscreen print, black/white phosphorescent on poster paper, 50 × 100 cm, edition of 300. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1999.
Edition offered to the members of 1999 of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine association.
VideosofIntegratedPresentation at the8th BiennialofMoving Images, Centre pour l’image contemporaine, Saint-Gervais Geneva.
IntegratedVideos, 1995-1999
Compilationof all thevideos embeddedby ThomasHirschhornat its installationsbetween 1995 and 1999, video, VHS PAL, 15 ‘, color, sound, achieved byraising andCoraly Suard-Hirschhorn, producedby the Centre pour l’image contemporaine, Saint-Gervais Geneva in collaboration withthe Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine,published bybdv, Paris, 1999.
Elena Montesinos, Tune out, Turn off, Drop in, 1997
Presentation of the editions, Love It by Elena Montesinos and FUJI 4 Alexandre Bianchini ( publication edited by Véronique Bacchetta ), subtitle of the event: ” MXP Live electronics, non-stop drinks + noise “. Friday, November 28, 1997, in the evening and during the exhibition Été 97.
Elena Montesinos, Love it, blotting paper, plastic, 8.2 × 12.1 cm, edition of 300, numbered and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1997.
Edition offered to the members of 1997 of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine association.
Exhibition from June 16 to July 18, 1997
Opening June 14, 1997
Photographies, 1997″ width=”1000″ height=”774″> Stan Douglas, Photographies, 1997
[ … ] Most often, Stan Douglas’s films are shown as installation in which music, text and images cross each other. Each screening mobilizes the entire space, involving the viewer in a subjective scene that immerses it in a historical and cultural universe, where are combined new computer technologies and aesthetic charged with references, often nostalgic. (Véronique Bacchetta , extract from the press release)
Exhibition from November 7 to December 21, 1996
Opening November 6, 1996
Sans titre, 1996″ width=”912″ height=”1200″> Heimo Zobernig, Sans titre, 1996
With objects that one hesitates to describe as artistic or utilities, Heimo Zobernig questions both the places of art (the exhibition, the catalog) and the everyday environment (a bar, a facade). (Véronique Bacchetta , extract from the press release)
Heimo Zobernig, Sans titre, 15 lithographs, black, on BFK Rives 300 g/m2 paper, 80 × 65 cm, edition of 4 plus 1 A.P. and 1 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1996.
Exhibition from May 4 to 15 June 1996
Opening May 3, 1996
Kristin Oppenheim, view of the exhibition, 1996
Her artistic practice situates it-self in an infra-thin area where each act, minimized – sounds, line, light – is repeated endlessly. Repetition insinuates a reseach for a breaking point where the mastery yields to the humanity of the gesture and the voice. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
Kristin Oppenheim, Slip, six lithographs, black/white, on BFK Rives 300 g/m2 paper, 80 × 60 cm, edition of 8 plus 2 A.P. and 2 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1996.
Presentation of various editions (1992-1994) and etchings published by the Centre.
For the edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Rosemarie Trockel incorporates elements that have traveled through his work. If, in her “paintings”, electric hob stove or knitted patterns replace in a trivial and playful way the forms of minimalism, for this serie of engravings long woolen thread blocked in the varnish organize the networks of clumsy and trembling lines – line networks that transform a grid or decorative designs repeated several times in a stylized writing. This distance towards abstract painting codes is recovered in a very pragmatic and immediate approach of the engraving where an object is reproduced literally in its texture. Again, artisanal qualities of the technique are used not for their material effects, but with objectivity and amused detachment that often characterize the works of Rosemarie Trockel. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
Rosemarie Trockel, Sans titre, 3 etchings (3 patterns: grid, loops, balloons), soft wax, colour, on BFK Rives 300 g/m2 paper, 120 × 90 cm, printed in 9 copies (of which: 3 blue copies, 3 red copies and 3 green copies, signed and dated), edition of 27 plus 9 A.P. and 11 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1996.
Exhibition from November 30 to January 27, 1996 Opening November 29, 1995
Thomas Hirschhorn, view of the exhibition, 1995
Thomas Hirschhorn, view of the exhibition, 1995
Thomas Hirschhorn, view of the exhibition, 1995
One of the rooms will be occupied by a huge “stand” (Les Plaintifs, les Bêtes, les Politiques). […] The other rooms will be crossed by a cardboard box wall where Thomas Hirschhorn will intervene by collages of photographs, newspaper clippings and pages from his previous catalogs. The comments he will add will enable him to act again and document his exhibitions again. This kind of presentation gives the opportunity not only to re-expose his work but to subject it to self-criticism, justifying itself again and again, breaking the classification of genres – exhibitions, videos, catalogs, texts, editions – to defer the closure of his work. The works are reused and re-discussed, like the cardboard box constituent material, revealing an artistic practice that also announces itself on the mode of recovery and recycling. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
From October 12 toNovember 18, 1995 OpeningOctober 11, 1995
Karen Kilimnik, view of the exhibition, 1995
Karen Kilimnik, Tiger, 1995
Karen Kilimnik, Tiger, 1995
[…] Karen Kilimnik appropriates love affairs and escapades of media personalities: stars, supermodels and princesses, from Elizabeth Taylor to Michael Jackson via Caroline of Monaco or Kate Moss. […] She transposes her fascinations and schizophrenic fantasies that range between freshness, innocence and violence, the horror of thriller, the famous tragic event, whether the Manson family crimes, the murder of John Kennedy, the occupation of Paris … Some of its “decorations” overloaded with a multitude of objects and images seem to emerge from a disaster, close to the results of an action or a happening, remembering the hazard game of Fluxus or of art in progress. But this research for identity and the fascination for dated and glamor can switch very quickly into drama when Karen Kilimnik goes to spray with bullets her hanging just finished with a machine gun. The seven black and white lithographs are collected in a luxury and flashy box, covered with fake tiger fur and lined with shiny satin. This box contains seven subjects partially copied or inspired of celebrity pages of magazines. […] These lithographs, will find their readability thanks to a mirror slipped into a pocket crafted in the same fake fur than the box. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
Karen Kilimnik, Tiger, 7 lithographs, black/white, on Velin BFK Rives 250 g/m2 paper, white, 70 × 50 cm, one silkscreen print on Pop’set Californie 240 g/m2 paper, 35 × 49.5 cm, a plastic mirror and a plexiglas plate used as impressum, in a box covered in fake fur and lined with satin, 54 × 74 cm, edition of 10 plus 2 A.P. and 2 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1995.
“Edition-exhibition” from June 1 to July 15, 1995 Opening May 31, 1995
Luc Tuymans, view of the exhibition, 1995
Luc Tuymans, view of the exhibition, 1995
LucTuymans asks throught the representation, the question ofthe statusof paintingin the current fieldof art.Inspired as much by thecinemaand photography, he reflects the world ofresurgencesandfantasies, intimateand disenchanted, relatedto the collective memoryandpersonal recollections. Theseimages are oftenmangled bysomespecifictreatment that givesan impressionof bothblurand immediat. (VéroniqueBacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Luc Tuymans, Le Verdict, 11 colour lithographs, printed on 7 strips of blotting paper, 50 × 590 cm, 50 × 569 cm, 50 × 506 cm, 50 × 210 cm, 50 × 195 cm and 50 × 200 cm, edition of 8 plus 2 A.P. and 2 H.C., numbered, signed and dated. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1995.
Strip No 1: Strip with 3 lithographs, 50 × 569 cm.
Sold out
Strip No 2: Strip with 2 lithographs, 50 × 590 cm.
Sold out
Strip No 3: Strip with 2 lithographs, 50 × 506 cm.
Claude Closky, 8560 nombres qui ne servent pas à donner l’heure,1994
L’exposition n’aura pas lieu du 27 janvier au 26 mars 1994. Le vernissage ne sera pas le 26 janvier avant 18h. Il n’y aura pas d’édition de huit séries de 20 livres d’artiste intitulés « 1440 nombres qui servent à donner l’heure ». Fermé le dimanche, fermé le samedi avant 14h et après 17h, du lundi au vendredi avant 14h et après 18h. Édition de deux séries de 80 livres d’artiste intitulés « 8560 nombres qui ne servent pas à donner l’heure ». Du lundi au vendredi de 14h à 18h, le samedi de 14h à 17h et sur rendez-vous. (Invitation double-sided written by Claude Closky)
Each of the80booksreproducedon216 pages, a non-existentminutefigurescopied toa digital clock.(Véronique Bacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Claude Closky, 8560 nombres qui ne servent pas à donner l’heure, 2 series of 80 books of 214 pages, on Data Copy Coated 100 g/m2 paper, 21 × 15 cm, one separable series and one inseparable series. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1994.
Exhibitionand edition of abookobject, 235.604-1789. The textsor fragments oftexts used byAlexHanimannare oftenindifferentlyextracted from manuals, philosophical maximsorpolitical slogans.
Alex Hanimann, 235.604 – 1789, 112 lino engravings on ivory satin cardboard 240 g/m2, black and red, presented in a black box, 32.5 × 24 cm, edition of 20 plus 2 A.P. and 2 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1994.
The editionImages de pierresproduced bythe Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine andco-publishedwith the Schoolof Fine Artsof Annecy,is made up of fiveprintsdrawn on the basisoflithographyfrom fivemarble slabs, chosenand reworkedbyGiuseppe Penone. This particularexperimental technique, very empirical, allows to findand print thenaturalveinsof the marblethat constitutethe matrixand the patternof this series. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
Giuseppe Penone, Image de pierres, lithograph from a marble slab, 85 × 63 cm, edition of 19 plus 2 A.P. and 4 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1993.
Exhibitionfrom 17 June to30 July 1993 OpeningJune 16, 1993
Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson, Corrections, 1993
Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson, Réserve, 1993
Joint presentationof paintings,drawingsand edition of theCentre(book and portfolio).
SigurdurArniSigurdsson, Icelandicyoungpainter,tacklesfigurative paintingwithout previousspeeches,nor on the“painting–painting” nor on aso-calledreturnto representation.His subjects areextremelysimplifiedarchetypes(lakes, clouds, animals) orabstract forms(balls, circles, ovals). […]These simplified objects floaton amonochromesurface, oftencoldandbright, suggesting a borealatmosphere, that they penetrate, creating a confrontation betweenflat spaceandthe illusionistspace.Theschizophrenicspace andshapes in suspensionarising fromthese pureandtransparent surfacestransport us toimaginarytalesand legends. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson, Corrections, series of 6 collotypes, black/white, on collotype paper, 30 × 30 cm, edition of 60 plus 2 A.P. and 4 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1993.
Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson, Réserve, artist’s book, 6 double pages, etching on BFK Rives and japanese style paper, 22 × 17 cm, edition of 60 plus 2 A.P. and 4 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1993.
O.T.(screen printing on canvas), 1993″ width=”686″ height=”1000″> Ian Anull, O.T.(screen printing on canvas), 1993
For Ian Anüll, art is an integral part of society, it is not an alternative to reality or to the banality of the world nor a subject of mystification. His work always oscillates between right and wrong, the message and the irony, art and non-art. […] Ian Anüll rather cultivates independence and impertinence that enable him to collect and update them with quick thinking and foresight the nonsense and pitfalls of the artistic conformism and also of the society. Posted in Exhibition, Solo showsTagged Ian Anüll
Exhibition from February 12 to March 27, 1993 Opening February 11, 1993
Sans cible, 1993″ width=”1000″ height=”657″> Claude Gaçon, Sans cible, 1993
Installations, drawings, sculptures, objects and editions.
Since 1985, Claude Gaçon constitutes a collection of balls. He produces and recovers an infinity of spherical objects, composed of such diverse and strange as unexpected materials: paper, marble, lava, wire, plastic, crystal, fur, etc. This accumulation built a non exhaustif catalog of all possible and imaginable formal combinations between full and empty, the heavy and the light, the precious and commonplace. The pure shape is also the starting point for conceptual games and investigation, between inside and outside, content and container, order and disorder, purity and impurity, dispersion and concentration … […] In an aesthetics close of scientific and biological performances – viruses, atoms, anatomical plates, maps and world maps – Claude Gaçon seeks endlessly to imagine, to simplify, to understand and master the elusive three-dimensional shape. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
Claude Gaçon, Sans cible, series of 6 engravings, etching and offset, black/white, on Vélin BFK Rives 280 g/m2, 50 × 50 cm, edition of 8 plus 2 H.C., numbered, signed and dated. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1993.
Presentation of aseries of twenty-one uniqueengravings.
The work ofJohn Armlederhas long beenas close totheneo-Fluxus as the geometric painting. Hispictorial referencesare numerous:PicabiaandEl LissitzkytoBlinky Palermo,HelmutFederleand OlivierMossetthroughSigmar Polke. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
John M Armleder, Sans titre, 21 unique engravings (etchings and monotypes), colour, on Arches paper, 200 × 100 cm, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1992.
Exhibitionfrom 14 February to7 March 1992 OpeningFebruary 13, 1992
Stephane Landry, view of the exhibition, 1992
Drawings, wallinterventions andartist book.
Lithographsprintedat the Centre byLaurentMathelin, typography of the firstcover,title pageandcolophonconducted bythe Imprimerie des Arts, Geneva, boundbyCraftsmanBookbinder, Jean-PierreNetz, Geneva.Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, 1991.
Exhibitionof 6 December1991 to11 January 1992 OpeningDecember 5, 1991
Laurence Pittet, Sans titre, 1991
Lithographs andpaintings. 1991 Lithographsprintedbythe CentreLaurentMathelin. Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, 1991.
Laurence Pittet, Sans titre, series of 3 lithographs, colour (1 black, 1 red, 1 blue), on Arches paper, 50 × 65 cm, edition of 9 for each colour plus 1 H.C., numbered, signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1991.
CHF 200.– per lithograph
Laurence Pittet, Sans titre, series of 3 lithographs, colour (1 red, 1 blue, 1 yellow), on newspaper, 64.5 × 94 cm, edition of 9 for each colour plus 3 H.C., numbered, signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1991.
CHF 200.– per lithograph
Laurence Pittet, Sans titre, colour lithography on Arches paper, 38 × 46.5 cm, edition of 20 plus 1 H.C., signed and numbered. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1991.
[…]Analmost cinematiccontinuityis woven betweenthese portraits. Her work is basedon an oppositionbetweenthe snapshot andthe pose.The modellayingsix to sevenseconds, whilethe image remainsthat of a fragmentof a glance,afleetingnod, barely sketched. SuzanneLafontmoves themeaningof her imagesbetween “taken from life” andset design,between the soleand the seriesbetweenthe pictorialandcinematic.(VéroniqueBacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Jean-Michel Othoniel, view of the exhibition, 1991.
Presentation of thefiveframed printsanda moldedobject withsulfurbulleyes, Histoire d’yeux.
[…]Without wishing toreturn toarchaicorsome nostalgiatoo oftenattachedto traditionalprintmakingtechniques (as it happens thetechnicalcopperoccurrenceinflowers of sulfurdating from theeighteenth century), the featuresoffered by the direct attack of the copper by the sulfur(withoutacidinterference) fit perfectlyto the work ofJean-Michel Othoniel andhis researchfor this edition.The artist seeks toreproducetrademarks,ghostsof objects: clothing, fabrics.
Roman Signer, Installation hélicoptère, 1990, 1990
[…]Roman Signerworks onnatural elements–water, fire, air, earth –and sometimesindustrializedormanufacturedobjects such asboxes, cans, balloons or furniture, making themfly,fall, explode,filling, emptying, etc., like Richard Serrawhen he proposed, in 1967-1968, hisfamous listofaction verbs “roll, fold, bend, twist, split, cut …”Roman Signerprefersthe progress, the processand the idea ofmoving sculpture.(Véronique Bacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Sapins de Noël, 1988-1989, 1990″ width=”1000″ height=”668″> Jean-Marc Meunier, Sapins de Noël, 1988-1989, 1990
Jean-MarcMeunier isforemostlandscape photographer: in 1984, his first important seriesis devoted to thetransformation ofneighborhoodsinsouth-east London, offeringwhole landscapesunder construction,half savage, halfindustrial. He then focuseson vegetation,particularlyvegetationaccreditationsuburban areasand residential areas, and itsinterminglingwith architectureand publicfacilities. His seriesonChristmas trees,carried out between November1988 and January1989 in theGeneva area, continues that theme. (OlivierLugon, extract from the press release)
Anne Pesce, Pêcheur, c’est lui qui devient un poisson, 1990
AnnePescetries to findadefinition of paintingin the nihilistic context of the recent years. Avoidingto get confused withthe movements“neo”and otherpost-modernism that never endto killpainting,AnnePescetries totake it upthroughamore poeticand philosophical.It createsmetaphoricallinksbetween painting, words, critical thinking and the world: “I like to paintto stop thinking, think to paintis only an aping ofthebig tideof the spirit.“
Anne Pesce, Pêcheur, c’est lui qui devient un poisson, artist’s book with a text by the artist, offset on laid paper Conqueror 100 g/m2 and 220 g/m2, 21 × 19 cm, edition of 150 plus 20 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1990.
Exhibitionfrom February 12 toMarch 24, 1990 OpeningFebruary 10, 1990
Andreas Hofer, Sans titre, 1990
Andreas Hofer, Sans titre, 1990
Presentationof the edition andinstallation in theParc de Malagnouin front of the Centre, of the six double-sidedpanels (remained in place from 1989 to2000)
In the parkin front of theCentre, will be installeda series ofpanelssimilarto those used forroad signs,except that thediscs do notpresent theconventionalacronyms,butabstract signs, perforated orenamelled.Plantedfollowingeach other, these six panelswill turn intoa succession oftargets, bringing confusionon the actualfunction of the setand an ironic dash to omnipresencein our citiesof the signsand itsprocession of prohibited. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from thepress release)
Andreas Hofer, Sans titre, box containing 6 perforated discs, covered with enamel front and back, on aluminium, colour and black/white, with an impressum on cardboard in a tracing paper envelope. With two colour photographs of the installation. 52.5 × 52.5 cm, edition of 20, numbered and marked with a dry stamp « H » at the bottom of the box. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1990.
Silkscreen-prints(1978-1979) From September 18 toOctober 28, 1989
La dernière pomme frite et autres poèmes des fifties et sixties, 1989″ width=”1200″ height=”904″> Emmett Williams, La dernière pomme frite et autres poèmes des fifties et sixties, 1989
Presentation of the edition and silkscreen-prints.
Emmett Williams, La dernière pomme frite et autres poèmes des fifties et sixties, 112 lino engravings on ivory satin cardboard 240 g/m2, black and red, presented in a black box, 32.5 × 24 cm, edition of 20 plus 2 A.P. and 2 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Edition of the Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, Geneva, 1989.
During the exhibition: presentation at the Centre of the filmImages du monde visionnaireof HenriMichaux,directed by EricDuvivier(1963). TheJune 14, 1989in the evening:Concertof NewQuartetof Geneva, 5th quartet of GiacintoScelsidedicated toHenri Michauxand the works ofH.Villa Lobosand AntonWebern
Today, it seems importantto reportby textsof the will of producingand experimenting of Michaux,always with the samehonestyfacing the sign in movement and the abstract sign, as well asits points of cinematographicview, givento see,in theirprofusion, like a picture book.
Henri Michaux, catalogue: Introduction d’Anne Patry et Paul Viaccoz, textes de Jean Starobinski, Alfred Pacquement, Alain Jouffroy, René Micha, Raymond Bellour et biographie de Geneviève Bonnefoi, cinquante-deux pages, 32 x 24 cm, offset sur papier Biber 65 mat 150 gm2, seize ill. noir/blanc et deux ill. couleurs, sept-cent exemplaires, imprimés par Victor Chevalier Imprimerie Genevoise SA, édités par le Centre, Genève, 1989
The landscapes ofAndreasGurskyaresoccer fields, swimming pools, mountains,artificial lakes,play areas, intermediate areas betweentown and country,theSundaywalks.Man isat the centerof these photographs,althoughthe landscapeis omnipresent.
Exhibition from February 25 to April 2, 1989
Opening February 25, 1989
Presentation of the complete series of 35 large format prints published by the Centre and exposed in 1988 (Stéphane Brunner, Gravures, March 17 to April 23, 1988) and paintings, Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Exhibition of 18 November 1988 to 14 January 1989
Opening November 17, 1988
Estampes, 1989″ width=”1200″ height=”636″> Mori Shigeru, Estampes, 1989
The Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine, in 1985, had exposed several works of young Genevan artists from the School of Visual Arts in Geneva. Without being in the hunt for young talents, the Centre would like to show that etching is still a field of investigation for new formal and conceptual preoccupation. Shigeru Mori, was born in Japan in 1952, student of the engraving workshop of the School of Visual Arts in Geneva since 1985, he works with a traditional technique, particularly spectacular – black aquatint – he uses in a “modern” perspective with reports of abstract and minimal forms. (Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release)
O.T.(screen printing on canvas), 1993″ width=”686″ height=”1000″> Ian Anull, O.T.(screen printing on canvas), 1993
Sans cible, 1993″ width=”1000″ height=”657″> Claude Gaçon, Sans cible, 1993
