Alain Huck: Respirer une fois sur deux

The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (MCBA), is pleased to present Alain Huck’s solo exhibition Respirer une fois sur deux.

Organized in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition offers a survey of nearly thirty years of creative output, from the early works on canvas to the most recent drawings, by way of the monumental charcoal drawings that established Huck as a major presence. The exhibition is articulated around the question of text and its relationship to the image, of language and its representation, of what can be said and what is left unspoken, of what is remembered and what makes history. Similarly, just as in the works themselves meanings emerge from the montage between text and image, from the overlaying of distinct images, and from the uncertainty of the image itself, the show is conceived in terms of associations. Here the artist creates dialogues between works from very different periods and of varying kinds. Works from major series of drawings are displayed alongside others that use a variety of supports, including tarpaulins, jute sacks, plants, and neon lights, forging a nonchronological approach to the artist's body of work to generate new meaning.

Three galleries articulate three themes that run throughout Huck’s art, i.e., the question of Nature, History, and the Social Contract. Less visible, though contained in the very title of the show and circulating in and through the works, is the question of respiration, Respirer une fois sur deux (literally “taking one breath out of every two”). Respiration is that breath that enables us to utter language, voice stories, transmit history, start a narrative. It is felt in the materials of works that may move in the draughts generated by bodies in motion; it is the inhaling and exhaling that are essential to wandering around the exhibition space. Its absence connotes death - of language, of the living. All the artist's work can thus be read from the paradoxical statement that gives the exhibition its title: suspended or absent breathing is matched by the attempt to maintain, despite everything, the connection with the rustle of the living.

Curated by Nicole Schweizer, Curator of contemporary art, MCBA.

Biography
Trained at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Alain Huck (born 1957 in Vevey), lives and works in Lausanne. In 1987 he was a cofounder of the independent art space M/2 in Vevey. He has had residencies at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome (1989–90) and the Cité internationale des arts in Paris (1997), and solo shows at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne (1990 and 2007), the Musée Jenisch in Vevey (2006), the MAMCO in Geneva (2009), the Centre culturel Suisse in Paris (2012) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy (2012). His awards include the Prix Culturel Manor Vaud (1990), the Swiss Art Awards (1989, 1991, 1997), the Prix de la Fondation Irène Reymond (1992), the Bourse de la Fondation Leenaards (2002) and the Grand Prix du Canton de Vaud (2013).

Publication
Nicole Schweizer (ed.).
Volume: Alain Huck. Postanimal Beauty, co-ed. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne and art&fiction publications, Lausanne, 2025, 148 p.
Insert: Alain Huck. Respirer une fois sur deux, with texts by Sophie Ballmer, Christian Cuénoud, Célia Houdart, Robert Ireland, Julie Lang, David Lemaire, Alessandro Mercuri, Federico Nicolao, Guillaume Pilet, Christophe Rey, Carina Roth, Laurence Schmidlin, Nicole Schweizer, Katia Schwerzmann, Jacques Sprunger, and Stéphane Zaech, co-ed. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne and art&fiction publications, Lausanne, 2025, 44 p.
CHF 48 at the MCBA Book-and Giftshop → shop.mcba@plateforme10.ch

Events
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