Horizones

Artists: Hélène Bertin, Timothée Calame, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Eva Nielsen, Benoît Piéron, Jean-Michel Sanejouand, Elsa Werth

Under the exhibition name Horizones—a portmanteau word specifically crafted for this occasion—the 23rd Pernod Ricard Foundation Prize brings together 6+1 artists invited by the French curator and art critic Clément Dirié. Recent works and new productions by Hélène Bertin, Timothée Calame, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Eva Nielsen, Benoît Piéron, and Elsa Werth are exhibited together with works dated 1964–2011 by maverick and always-young artist Jean-Michel Sanejouand (1934–2021).

In the last episode of the logbook he wrote from November 2021 to July 2022 Clément Dirié says: “I don't really know what the audience expects, in 2022, from such an exhibition-prize and the manifesto text that accompanies it. Should I enumerate the political and aesthetic issues tackled by these artists? Should I try a detailed report on artistic creation at the beginning of the 2020s? Should I decipher how the exhibited works perhaps respond to the vicissitudes of the current world or to former art practices? Maybe so...On the other hand, I know what this experience with Hélène, Timothée, Fabiana, Eva, Benoît, Elsa, and Jean-Michel has brought me: the certainty that art has the power to act and imagine, the increased desire to live with artworks, that art is what makes life decidedly as interesting as art—to misquote Robert Filliou.”

About his curating, Clément Dirié states: “With its open scenography, the exhibition gives prominence to the universes of each artist without seeking to dictate a specific theme or artificially link their artistic practices. Each artist exhibits an ensemble that conveys the sense of their current research, bearing witness to the diversity of today’s contemporary creation. Hélène Bertin: a freely expressive practice of ceramics supporting the regeneration of traditional gestures and representations. Timothée Calame: a sculptural ensemble where the prosaic, the political, and the erotic are ingredients for a fictionalization of reality. Fabiana Ex-Souza: a space dedicated to reparation and the acknowledgement of healing processes in public, private, and artistic spheres. Eva Nielsen: a pictorial environment where motifs, textures, and colors are echoed across her paintings, putting our memories to the test. Benoît Piéron: a tribe of serum containers and a series of soap-portraits embodying and projecting the various conditions of our lives, desires, and fragilities. Elsa Werth: elusive works that closely question the socio-economic state of our society. Jean-Michel Sanejouand: a selection of works from 1964 to 2011 reminding us of the intelligence of his vision and practice.”

Eager to underline the importance of curiosity and the fruitful merits of eclecticism, he continues: “By choosing to draw together approaches that do not seem to be connected by anything, except their contemporaneity and the unwavering belief I have in them, the principal challenge lay in articulating them within the exhibition, so that the works do not soliloquize but instead intersect through their forms, auras, and obsessions. To create what is, I hope, an organic landscape cultivated by the fertile meeting between singular aesthetics and the eclectic curiosity of the knowledge, emotions, and experiences both felt and transmitted by the artists.”

In keeping with the new formula of the Pernod Ricard Foundation Prize established in 2020, Clément Dirié has conceived his project in two parts: the Companionship between January and September 2022, and the exhibition in September-October 2022. The extensive program of the Companionship took the form of successive workshop, concert, lecture, and the production of multiples. It was inaugurated in January 2022 by the “Musterclasses” for which each artist talked with the curator and comprised an open-air film club in July 2022.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue conceived by Clément Dirié and graphic design studio Des Signes. It includes extensive conversations with the artists, a visual essay on Jean-Michel Sanejouand, the curator’s logbook written between November 2021 and July 2022, as well as an interview between Clément Dirié and curator and art critic Julie Portier.