ailleurs… ou plus loin

With the exhibition ailleurs… ou plus loin [elsewhere... or beyond], the Frac Centre-Val de Loire pursues its exploration of the notion of wandering. This eternal quest for the self and others, for the real world and dreams leads to the same uncertain result, or even to an illusion, but always in the vicinity of a truth.

Departing elsewhere, to find oneself. And others. Departing elsewhere to escape monotony and routine. To experience something that evades predictions and dominion, without taking the measure of the distance travelled and the time spent. Here, it is a question of traversing time or space, of a quest for the self as well as a discovery of the Other, the desire for elsewhere, the pursuit of the remote acting as transformative, initiatory processes that will spawn a new world, similar and yet so different from the one left behind.

And so we waver between the fear of no longer recognising our next of kin or that of having been forgotten by them. Besides which, there is the memory of the self. When we return, we are always young, the land we once left has not watched us grow older, has kept nothing of our doubts, loves, and tears. It retains only the memory of our arrogant, crazy youth, convinced that we would conquer the world. So! How do we set down our old bones in a place where there is no longer any memory of us? The question is abyssal, and only art will venture for us into these depths.

Has elsewhere become too close today or has it disappeared? We set out to reach it and laugh at ourselves, at the idiots we are for believing that it is far away. When it is actually further than that. It is beyond hope, beyond freedom, beyond justice, beyond love, beyond living, beyond truth. But it would seem, according to some, that “beyond” is precisely where an artwork resides.

Elsewhere escapes, just as it brings into existence; it is both fleeing and discovery. And just a handful of words, images, sounds, or scents will allow the experience of an elsewhere to be captured by fragments while loss and oblivion to be exorcised from it. 

Artists: Daphné Bengoa, Deborah Benzaquen, Sophie Calle, Sonia Gassemi, Klaus Gartler & Helmut Rieder, Jochen Gerz, André Guiboux, Oum Kalthoum, Brigitte Mahlknecht, Manthey Kula, Naziha Mestaoui, Mouna Jemal Siala, Giovanna Silva, Lawrence Weiner

Curator: Abdelkader Damani (director of the Frac Centre-Val de Loire)

Contact communication: Marine Bichon, presse@frac-centre.fr