Edgar Sarin: objectif—société (variations goldberg)

Edgar Sarin looks for new physical and semantic terrain by devising exhibitions that create themselves over their lifetime according to, and within, the very space in which they unfold. He compares them to robust systems, able to play by ear, to be open to contingency, to take on multiple historical layers and to perform any number of balancing acts between composition and improvisation. He is seeking an ecology of action, following a relatively consistent long-term process to lay the foundations of his propositions: the artist begins by creating a stock of simple, inexpensive, and close at hand materials such as oak, limestone or clay, that he will place in the space and allow to settle. Using these material conditions, and a deal of skill, Edgar Sarin imagines a self-sustaining system that sculpts itself and takes form until it reaches a certain degree of presence. This way of working is political: he is part of a generation of artists who question the concept of the exhibition as an intrinsically sterile object. On the contrary, they profit from seeing it as a space that is sensitive to living rhythms; a site of displacement and of research into the immediate environment, that pays attention to collective harmony. His exhibitions are, therefore, fertile and progressively augmented structures whose theoretical and sensory depth can only really be fully felt at the end of being shown.

At Le Grand Café art centre, Edgar Sarin imagines a new story in the process of its making: the starting point for an unforeseen adventure that isn’t written in advance. But it is also an exhibition event closing a three-year cycle of major research, initiated in 2020 at the art centre in Clamart with a proposal entitled objectif : société [objective: society]. The cycle comes to an end in Saint-Nazaire, following a year-long residency at the art centre.

—Extract from a text written by Éva Prouteau, art critic.

Edgar Sarin is born in 1989 in Marseille, France, he lives ans works in Paris, France. He is represented by Michel Rein Gallery, Paris/Brussels.

Curator: Sophie Legrandjacques, director of Le Grand Café—Contemporary Art Centre

Press contact: Anne Samson Communication / Morgane Barraud morgane@annesamson.com