Francisco Tropa: Le Grand Café, the Moustache Hidden in the Beard / Krijn de Koning: Volumes and Voids

In 2018, Le Grand Café - Contemporary Art Centre celebrates 20 years of existence! The Art Centre's programme for the year is entirely aligned with this anniversary. 

Since its origin in 1998, this unique and singular site has developed an international project and authentic artistic testing ground closely connected to the town of Saint-Nazaire. This terrain's rich dynamics act as a support for the programme, its transformations mixing a remarkable industrial and social history with contemporaneity and the heritage of architectural modernity, with the maritime horizon and the imaginings of voyage.

In 20 years, Le Grand Café has presented the public with 80 exhibitions by artists, always demonstrating a particular perspective onto current national and international art in close dialogue with the contexts of the works' presentation and reception.

Le Grand Café has notably, since 2009, been investing the LiFE, inviting an artist to create a monumental work for special projects in a unique exhibition space of over 1,460 m2 sited in the heart of the former submarine base in Saint-Nazaire. This out-sized space has become a singular testing ground for Le Grand Café, extending its expertise in production and allowing international artists to realise unique projects.

This summer, Le Grand Café celebrates creativity with two new exhibitions devised by artists who call into question, each in their own way, the host site itself. 

Exhibition curator: Sophie Legrandjacques, director of Le Grand Café – contemporary art centre

Francisco Tropa
Le Grand Café, the Moustache Hidden in the Beard
At Le Grand Café

Like a perceptual plunge into suspended and indeterminate time, Francisco Tropa's work has all the beauty of a mystery that gradually reveals itself and takes us along with it beyond the visible.

The Portuguese artist installs the entirety of his new series "The Moustache Hidden in the Beard" at Le Grand Café, seemingly reviving its memory. In a subtle shadow theatre co-inhabited by classical figures, commercial ads, the surrealist spirit of Raymond Roussel and even Medieval or Renaissance technical inventions, he creates a space both familiar and faraway that re-enchants our perception of reality.

Krijn de Koning
Volumes and Voids
At LiFE

The Dutch artist Krijn de Koning fills the monumental space of the LiFE with a labyrinthine sculpture that upends classic interior—exterior perception. Like an inside-out architectural skin, his life-size sculpture offers up a journey that multiplies sensations and spatial situations. A universe in itself, where colour is used everywhere to accentuate the intimate and jubilatory experience of the space, blurring the border between reality and fiction and echoing the ambivalent character of the building that houses this singular experience.

On the occasion of the opening of these two exhibitions: launch of Plein Soleil, summer of contemporary art centers, a project by d.c.a / French Association of development of contemporary art centers.

Upcoming exhibitions

Anne Le Troter, artist, in residence
In collaboration with Charlotte Khouri, artist performer
Residence 2017-1018
Performances in July 2018
Exhibition January–March 2019 

Destructive Poetry
An exhibition by the artists Mountaincutters
Curated by Guillaume Désanges
October 13, 2018–January 6, 2019

Press contact
Brunswick Arts, life-grandcafe@brunswickgroup.com