LIFE, TESTED…
December 18, 2009–February 14, 2010
Opening: December 17, 6.30 pm
Institut d’art contemporain
Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes
11 rue Docteur Dolard
F-69100 Villeurbanne
Guest curator: Sandra Cattini
The title of the exhibition —borrowed from Jimmie Durham— is a word that makes an image. It is impossible to pronounce unless described literally as ‘life crossed out diagonally’ and is a condensation of several lines of the exhibition, ranging from a route through territory indicated by a road sign to the irreducibility of image to word.
Several stories of lives or experiences in real time are provided along the route, setting storytelling alongside experience. Their evocative force is strengthened by the link between works and language, whether as a struggle or a disjunction. The question of boundaries is raised, with what limits, what prevents and calls for strategies of circumvention or transcendence to go beyond the framework or to generate stridency, a visual feedback effect. Things can shift out of the frame, the model can be derailed or the artificial can gain power, all being on each occasion the material or subject of a sudden surge and certainly forming one of the essential components of the exhibition.
The works shown often follow a pathway leading from the document to the poem by feeding on the real which, by means of a swelling body of descriptions and observation, comes to life under our eyes and performs a metamorphosis from herbarium to garden. The collected hubbub of the world and the various states of society documented thus cause a kind of dazzling or the swinging of the spotlight from the stage to the audience.
Although the relationship with language tries to prevent it from controlling experience, the notion of story runs right through the exhibition—through the chronicler or storyteller and also through the presence of anecdotes and small events. More than making a critique of established order or a satire of society, the artists give us a view of the world deeply worked by the curve of a revolution, a twisting movement that can be driven by a breath of resistance and energy that is sometimes as destructive as creative.
The Institut d’art contemporain gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Culture (DRAC Rhône-Alpes), the Rhône-Alpes region and the city of Villeurbanne.
For further information: www.i-ac.eu
Press contact: Delphine Peyronnet: d.peyronnet@i-ac.eu
Opening hours : Wednesday to sunday – 1pm to 7pm
