collective show, co-curated with Marie Bassano, IMOCA, Irish Museum Of Contemporary Art, 2009
with Pierre Bonnouvrier, Anthony Jacquot-Boeykens, Jean-Alain Corre, Grégory Cuquel, Simon Feydieu, Samuel Moncharmont et Benjamin Seror
Photo © Simon Feydieu
Foreword
« Name dropping is the practice of mentioning important people or institutions into a conversation, story, song or other communication. ... »
While nowadays it seems naive and outdated to co-sign an artistic manifesto, one can still find strong influences, links and common aspects between different artists coming from the same scene. What we call a scene could be based on a three-way factor such as educational background, congeniality, sharing the same working studio, or taking part into the same group shows.
As curators, we propose to outline the tendencies or trends of some artists’ work coming from Lyon, by only showing collaborative pieces. All practice and medium taken together, we want to show artworks, born from spontaneous encounters between artists that ususally work on their own.
Therefore, it consists in taking an innovative and experimental stance so as to discover the work of an unknown artist. The multiplicity and diversity coming out of the collaborations enable to disclose the specificity of each, in terms of gesture or formal lexicon. If the expression name dropping has a derogatory connotation, we ironically chose to use it so as to assert a twoness in the notion of author while simultaneously promoting continental young artists. It won’t consist in underlining differences between them, as there is no relevancy in terms of contrast or association, neither in claiming a new aesthetic but rather in emphasizing a tendency. To make sense out of links. Every selected artist will present pieces, which were born from different collaborations, enabling the uniqueness of each to be revealed. To give a voice to the artworks, to move the intrinsic formal connections of the process to the foreground : this curatorship aims at presenting a micro scene which main topic has to do with a work in progress, an invitation for the spectator to carry on the discovery of each artist through a platform of heteregeneous encounters. As a teaser, it is partial but judicious, the postulate being to reveal a minor part of each participating artist in favour of common postures and territories.