Ruth Ewan: It Rains, It Rains / Histoire de l'art cherche personnages... / Ben Thorp Brown: The Arcadia Center / Jean-Pierre Raynaud: Que chacun enchante sa prison

This summer the CAPC is opening four new exhibitions as part of the City’s cultural season, Liberté ! Bordeaux 2019.

Ruth Ewan: It Rains, It Rains
The first solo exhibition of the Scottish artist Ruth Ewan in France, borrows its title from the folk song "Il pleut, il pleut, bergère" written by the French revolutionary poet, actor and politician Fabre d’Églantine, who is said to have calmly recited the lyrics before his execution in 1794.

Ewan’s exhibition comprises the installation Back to the Fields, first shown in 2015 and entirely reconfigured for the CAPC’s iconic nave, as well as a series of objects connected to the French Republican calendar.

The Republican calendar was adopted by the Convention in 1793, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, to replace the Gregorian calendar. Embodying and translating the Republican ideals directly into the life of every citizen, it was in use for 12 years. It completed the dismantling of the Ancien Régime by reorganising time itself.

Consisting of the 360 objects representing the Republican year—including trees, plants, bones, minerals and tools—the installation Back to the Fields reactivates the rural calendar as a three-dimensional, life-size work. Expanding on this large-scale, living installation, Ewan has conceived a series of objects corresponding to the so-called "sans-culottides" (so named after the "sans-culottes"). These five holidays (six in leap years) were added to the last month of the Republican calendar so that it would match the 365 days of the solar year. Each celebrated a different quality: Virtue, Talent, Labour, Conviction, Honour, Revolution. To represent them, the artist has produced six new works that emphasise their cyclical nature while connecting them to wider political issues.

Curator: Alice Motard assisted by Alice Cavender and Émeline Vincent

Sponsor: TRUFFAUT
With the support of Creative Scotland and Fluxus Art Projects

Histoire de l’art cherche personnages…
The CAPC has partnered with the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image (CIBDI) in Angoulême and the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva to present a major exhibition based on their respective collections. Entitled Histoire de l’art cherche personnages…, the exhibition gathers over 100 works focusing on the representation of the human figure and the individual’s existence in its struggle with the environment, with history and with others.
Major paintings from the Fondation Gandur forming part of the Narrative Figuration movement (Gilles Aillaud, Erró, Gérard Fromanger, Jacques Monory) are presented alongside original works (plates, graphic novels, installations) by comic book authors, script writers and artists, as well as works selected from the CAPC collection, forming a thematic journey with an original exhibition design that borrows its formal vocabulary from Martin Vaughn-James’ visual novel The Cage.

With: Absalon, Valerio Adami, Gilles Aillaud, Leonor Antunes, Eduardo Arroyo, David B., Christian Babou, Pierre Buraglio, Charles Burns, Cham, Pascal Convert, Equipo Crónica, Hervé Di Rosa, Noël Dolla, Philippe Dupuy, Erró, Richard Fauguet, Chohreh Feyzdjou, André Franquin, Gérard Fromanger, Jochen Gerner, Claude Gili, Marcel Gotlieb, Emmanuel Guibert, Keith Haring, Noritoshi Hirakawa, On Kawara, Patrice Killoffer, Peter Klasen, les ready made appartiennent à tout le monde®, Suehiro Maruo, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Mario Merz, Pierre Molinier, Jacques Monory, Chantal Montellier, Bernard Pagès, Bernard Rancillac, Equipo Realidad, Ruppert & Mulot, Claude Rutault, Joe Sacco, Johanna Schipper, Antonio Segui, Richard Serra, Joann Sfar, Pierre Soulages, Art Spiegelman, Benjamin Swaim, Lewis Trondheim, Johannes Van der Beek, Martin Vaughn-James, Claude Viallat, Chris Ware, Willem, Winshluss, Raphaël Zarka

Curators: Alice Motard with Anne Cadenet and François Poisay (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux); Anne Hélène Hoog (Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image, Angoulême); Yan Schubert (Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève).

Exhibition Design: Éric Troussicot assisted by Coline Clavelloux (Sils Maria architecture)

Jean-Pierre Raynaud: Que chacun enchante sa prison
This outside-the-walls art trail is named after an aphorism from a collection entitled L’Art à perpétuité published by Jean-Pierre Raynaud in 2017, which illustrates the dialectic relationship the artist had with the idea of freedom, combining notions of purpose, coercion, engagement and imprisonment.

La Maison, for example, was a house and art installation near Paris that Raynaud designed and lived in from 1969 onwards, before giving it a new form: a thousand surgical steel containers containing the demolished remains of the building were exhibited in 1993 in the main hall of the CAPC—and are now being re-exhibited by the artist in the opulent Salon Boireau at the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux. Manifeste (1984), an installation of 19 carefully aligned beds associated with 19 paintings, will be presented at the Espace Saint-Rémi, inside an old church. Visitors to the Botanical Gardens can admire the monumental Pot 815 (1968), an icon of contemporary art that can be interpreted as a radical self-portrait. Last but not least, the CAPC will be exhibiting Dépoli (1993), a book/art object exploring the notions of inside and outside, mirroring the aphorism Que chacun enchante sa prison, which Jean-Pierre Raynaud will be discussing on July 11 at the CAPC.

After Richard Long in 2017, this major contemporary artist will thus be presented in several venues across the city via emblematic works from the CAPC collection, as part of Liberté ! Bordeaux 2019.

Curator: Anne Cadenet

Ben Thorp Brown: The Arcadia Center
Comprising a sound piece (Exercise, 2019), a sculpture (Shrine, 2019), and a newly commissioned film (Cura, 2019) set in the Richard and Dion Neutra VDL Research House II in Los Angeles, The Arcadia Center by Ben Thorp Brown is imagined as a speculative training space for a world that needs to restore its empathic abilities. Adopting the form of an arcadian sanctuary, The Arcadia Center calls for an architectural experience inspired by ancient mythology and the fields of psychology and neuroscience. The exhibition highlights the interplay of interpersonal and environmental forces, prompting the empathic imagination to reconnect with people, animals, and the natural world.

Curator: Laura Herman

The Satellite Program 2019: The New Sanctuary is co-produced by Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Museo Amparo, Puebla.

Upcoming
Daisuke Kosugi
October 31, 2019–February 2020
Opening: ​October 30, 2019
​Curator: Laura Herman

Lubaina Himid
October 31, 2019–February 2020
Opening: ​October 30, 2019
Curator: Alice Motard

Also on view
Takako Saito
Curators: Alice Motard, Eva Schmidt and Johannes Stahl
Until September 22, 2019

The CAPC musée d’art contemporain is a museum of the City of Bordeaux.

Museum patrons
Honorary patron: Château Haut-Bailly

Les Amis du CAPC
SUEZ, Château Chasse-Spleen, Château Haut Selve

Press
Pedro Jiménez Morrás
T +33 (0)5 56 00 81 70 / p.jimenezmorras@mairie-bordeaux.fr