Futomomo

Sylvie Auvray, Anne Bourse, Xinyi Cheng, Mathis Collins, Jean-Alain Corre, Than Hussein Clark, Cameron Jamie

Curator: Franck Balland

In an article titled “Éloge du fétichisme” (In Praise of Fetishism) published in the French daily Libération, philosopher Paul B. Preciado notes that the eroti­cization of objects represents “the most poetic and conceptual version” of humanity’s sexual history. The repertory of things which desire crystalizes around holds surprises, running from the classic shoes, to tears, to even hurricanes. In the field of art, the expression has a range of echoes. Fetishism signifies—occasionally with a little disdain from its critics—an attitude that sacralizes works thought to have a suprasensible power. It is about seeing in art objects more than a simple material mani­festation, admitting that they transcend this condition by adopting a high symbolic power. More rarely perhaps, it is through the very plasticity of the works of art, or what they represent, that we can glimpse the phenomena of the attraction to things. From a more psychological perspective, we ought to evaluate their fetishistic character as vehi­cles or even targets of the expression of desire.

While these two aspects are found entangled in Futomomo, it is these questions of desirable materials and representation that have been the focus of my wish to mount this show at CAC Brétigny. On the one hand, the exhibition took shape while working closely with Jean-Alain Corre, whose work explores a certain sensuality of forms and materials while revealing the way a domestic environment can be eroticized. And on the other, because, like Cameron Jamie, my attention was drawn to the work of artists whose treatment of objects sometimes suggests their ambiguous role—as if through their presence, which is terribly banal, they concealed the secret elements of a relationship with the other or the world.

I should say one last word about the title of this project, which is borrowed from Japanese. The word “futomomo” means “fat leg.” In shibari, an erotic practice that consists in tying up and suspending the body of one’s partner with ropes, futomomo is a specific type of knot for the leg. It is this specific relationship between the object, the body, and the expression of the occasionally complex desires uniting them that the exhibition would like to bring to light through the distorting specter of contemporary art.

Franck Balland

Press file available here

A public service of Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération, CAC Brétigny benefits from the support of Ministère de la Culture—DRAC Île-de-France, Région Île-de-France and Conseil départemental de l’Essonne, and with the complicity of the Brétigny-sur-Orge’s municipality. CAC Brétigny is a member of TRAM and d.c.a. The work of Jean-Alain Corre has received the support of Centre national des arts plastiques (National Centre for Visual Arts), France.