Denis Savary presents two portraits of artists with whom he has been in dialogue for several years, John M Armleder and Giulia Essyad. These two video portraits and two original works resonate with the program of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, where both artists were invited to produce editions: John M Armleder in 1992 and 2024, and Giulia Essyad in 2022 and 2024.
These two portraits depart from the classical approach to the genre, which typically documents and analyzes the artist’s work or personality. Savary instead focuses on recurring and distinctive elements of each artist’s practice – practices that, at first glance, seem to oppose one another: plants for Armleder, and her own body for Essyad.
Savary sees these two productions as a continuation of Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, the video he presented during his 2024 exhibition Quiet Clubbing at the Centre d’édition contemporaine. In both Armleder’s and Essyad’s portraits, we find the recurring theme of confinement within transparent spaces that characterized that earlier video – a kind of return to the past, featuring a light show in the style of a “rural discotheque”, projected onto the walls of his childhood home, turned into a screen. For John M Armleder, Savary creates a botanical garden inside a car interior, which is then driven through a car wash. The transparency and gloss of the windows are heightened by beams of light, water, and foam cascading over the glass, giving the illusion of artificial aquatic plants – all in perfect harmony with the soundtrack of Hawaiian music selected by John M and Stéphane Armleder. In Giulia Essyad’s portrait, the artist’s face appears in the darkness of an indoor laser tag game. The beams of light transform her into an otherworldly being, illuminated by an intense blue reminiscent of the Bluebots – her doubles, small figurines that appear throughout her video works.
Like Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, these new projects explore both the medium and the structure of video itself. Car Wash becomes a kind of psychedelic aquarium, where the image of washing water is projected onto dry plants, evoking splashes – a recurring motif in Armleder’s work. The video Giulia is similarly structured around an effect of projected light: the laser tag environment alternately merges with and reflects off Essyad’s face. The artist, like a ghost trapped inside a television screen, reveals – through transparency – the space she seems to haunt.
Denis Savary, Car Wash, portrait de John M Armleder, video, color, 38’40’’. Sound: compilation of Hawaiian music by John M and Stéphane Armleder. Camera: Margot Sparkes. Editing: Nicolas Ponce. Vegetal Set Design: Stella Falcoz. Acknowledgements: Hélène de Ryckel, Daniel Mudrecki, Car Wash SWISSWASH, Plan-les-Ouates, John M Armleder and Lena Guevry. Produced by Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2025Denis Savary, Giulia, portrait de Giulia Essyad, video, color, music, 03’48”. Camera: Margot Sparkes. Editing: Nicolas Ponce. Make-up: Morgane Gillioz. Acknowledgements: Giulia Essyad and Laser Game, Geneva. Produced by Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2025
Denis Savary (1981) lives and works in Geneva. His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently: Nashville, Kunsthaus Centre d’art Bienne, KBCB (2025) ; Quiet Clubbing, Centre d’édition contemporaine, CEC, Genève (2024) ; Roma, Roma, Roma, Rolex Learning Center, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (2024) ; Josy’s Club, with Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Synagogue de Delme (2023); Octogone, with Chloé Delarue, Mayday, Basel (2023); Flower of Fog, GNYP Gallery, Berlin (2022); Ambarabà Ciccì Coccò, with Alfredo Aceto, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen (2021). Recent group shows include Frau in Blau. Oskar Kokoschka und Alma Mahler, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2025); Le MAMCO, de mémoire, MAMCO, Geneva (2024); Temps de Mars, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2024); The Big Chill, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2023); Mirage, MCBA, Lausanne (2023); Deep Deep Down, MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2023); The Puppet Show, Centre d’art contemporaine, Geneva (2022).
This project is supported by the Office fédéral de la culture et de la République et canton de Genève.
In 2013, Caroline Bachmann began painting a view of Lake Geneva, at different times of the day, often at dawn, at dusk, or even at night, always from the same window from her house in Cully. These paintings are the result of a two-staged process. She starts with sketches, indicating areas of color and details of the landscape. Then, based on these drawings which are more like notations, she continues the painting process in her studio, away from the landscape. Bachmann never paints the landscape in the open air, but always after the fact, in her studio, that she calls “her cave”, or even further away from Lake Geneva, in her studio in Berlin. The short time of sketching gives place to a longer construction process during which she draws on her memory and imagination. Several paintings are produced in parallel, and it can take months before one of them is completed, a manner, through distance, of reappropriating and reinvesting this familiar and spectacular view.
The focalization on this unchanging everyday view of the lake has the precision of an imaginary telephoto lens. The painted frame that surrounds it equally translates a painting very far removed from naturalism or atmospheric effects; this double framing – the canvas border and the painted frame – accentuates the tight, kaleidoscopic vision of this body of water, struck between the immensity of the sky and a cirque of mountains, often set against the light. This recalls the dive in the chalk cliffs of Rügen in Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting Kreidefelsen auf Rügen (1818), or the open walls of Marcel Duchamp’s d’Étant Donnés : 1° La chute d’eau, 2° Le gaz d’éclairage (1946-1966). A particularly important reference for Caroline Bachmann, as the waterfall visible in the background of this work is located in Puidoux-Chexbres, in the same region as Cully. A discovery which motivated in-depth research on Étant Donné with Stefan Banz, followed by the organization of a symposium titled Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall. With Bachmann, as with Friedrich and Duchamp, the framing is fundamental. For her, it contributes to creating a distancing from the subject, transforming the painting into an image, more graphic, like a page, accentuating the stylization and cooling off the pictorial effect of oil painting with its impressionist effects of transparency.
The depth between sky, lake and mountains is matched by a dividing line between two horizontal planes, on either side of the horizon line, reminiscent of Ferdinand Hodler’s Le Léman vu de Chexbres (circa 1904), painted from the same shoreline. This horizontality suggests a suspended balance which resonates with Bachmann’s stylization of the band of clouds or with the grid formed by the sunbeams. Renouncing all human figures, all anecdotal elements, such as the boats on the lake, Bachmann accumulates imaginary forms – in volutes, arabesques and dot patterns – or strange, informal motifs. Of course, Bachmann also works with the luminosity of this exceptional geographical site, playing with the harmonies and disharmonies, through a seemingly limitless range of colors, from saturated to iridescent surfaces, moving from extremely luminous spots to more faded, darker details, multiplying sharp contrasts.
Bachmann’s formal vocabulary sometimes resembles strange, unidentified objects. This stylization, detached from any pop aesthetic, produces dreamlike, unconscious images, like traces and strokes of light on the retina. Bachmann thus keeps the liberty of an immense library of forms and colors, which enable her to escape any likening with romantic, regionalist formulas, or postcard visions. Concurring with a touristic typology, at the limit of the “too good to be true”, she transforms it in a poetic vocabulary, almost naïve or childlike, sometimes facetious, with influences from the seventies, hippy with a psychedelic tendency, touching the spiritual with the tip of her fingers. Without complacency, and whenever a sentimental exaltation could appear, Bachmann moves on, multiplies deviations and surprises, inventing new combinations, more vivid and biting, which enable her to ward off the temptation where the representation of a spectacular, fascinating, addictive landscape might carry her away.
On the occasion of her exhibition at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Caroline Bachmann presents a new edition of lithographs, Dix Matins, inspired by drawings made in 2023 in Überlingen, on the shores of Lake Constance. Here again, there is a unicity of place, subject and focal: the morning, the sky, the lake, and the horizon line with their combinations of light, shadow and reflection. However, each lithograph brings a surprise: a luminous sky alternates with games of stormy clouds, sunrise with a remanence of the moon or of the starry sky… The result is highly drawn, in a camaieu of blue; the surfaces seem to have been worked in fatty chalk or ballpoint pen to blend with the grain of the paper. Bachmann alternates flat tints, softened by the lithographic technic, and disseminations of small strokes or repetitive motifs, evoking embroidery. The sunbeams, shining through the bands of clouds and illumining the plan of water, sometimes left completely blank, emphasize the paper. The contrasts between light and dark are accentuated, but can also alternate with softer treatments, some images being very white, overexposed and calm, others very dark, stormy and dramatic. The unique cobalt blue, created specially by the lithographer, confers to these landscapes an aura seemingly derived from an ancient photographic technic, amplified by the tight, repetitive point of view. The view itself, between sky and lake, is part of a known aesthetic vocabulary, like a memory, an archetype, and even if Bachmann drew her inspiration from reality, it has been so reworked, in a double movement of refinement and reduction, that the image becomes factitious, in fact sublimated, following the example of Hokusai’s famous series of ten prints, La Grande Vague de Kanagawa (1830-1831). For, while each lithograph retains certain details specific to the location which determine the coherence of the series, the variations between each morning stimulate the eye, the curiosity, and, through the refining of a perfect lithographic script, prevents the repetition of signs from becoming iconic.
(trad. Julie Barral)
Born in Lausanne in 1963, Caroline Bachmann lives and works between Cully and Berlin. After studying at the École des arts décoratif in Geneva, Caroline Bachmann lived and worked in Barcelona and Rome, before returning to Switzerland in 2003, where she is currently based. From 2007 to 2022, she was professor and head of the painting and drawing department at the HEAD, the University of art in Geneva. She was awarded in 2022 the Meret Oppenheim Prize. She collaborated with Swiss artist Stefan Banz between 2004 and 2014, during which time they founded the KMD – Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp | the Forestay Museum of Art, an exhibition and research space, featuring mini-exhibitions in a transparent capsule-shaped structure. Two levels, a 360-degree display case, and an even smaller, more enclosed one inside the base of the cell. This minuscule exhibition room set up on a stand at eye-level of the passer-by, is permanently installed in Cully, along the lakeside Quai de l’Indépendance and Place d’Armes. Last exhibition: N’zo C’est Du Gâteau MARSEILLE DUCHAMP, on view until May 31, 2025. Her work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including: Caroline Bachmann & Nicolas Party, Tribute to a Lake, Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2025) ; Locus Solus, Lausanne, CH (2024) ; Le Rhin, Meyer Riegger, Berlin (2024) ; Le Matin, Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine (2023) et Galerie Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe (2022) ; Lune rousse reflet, Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2023) ; Prix Meret Oppenheim, Swiss Art Awards, Basel (2022) ; Nine Landscapes, Two Portraits, and OneCandy Bar, Meyer Riegger, Berlin (2022) ; 58 av. J.-C., Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2021) et Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus (2020) ; Starry Sky, Duane Thomas Gallery, New York (2020) ; Le temps retrouvé, Locus Solus, Lausanne (2019). Her work has also been included in numerous collective exhibitions: Hommage à Felix Vallotton, Musée Jenisch, Vevey (2025) ; Jardin d’hiver, MCBA, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2025) ; Modell Neutralität, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Suisse (2025) ; Le Mamco de mémoire, Mamco, Geneva (2024) ; Thalassa Thalassa! L’imaginaire de la mer, avec Stefan Banz, MCBA, Musée Cantonal des Beaux- Arts, Lausanne (2024) ; Temps de Mars, Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2024) ; Apropos Hodler,Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich (2024) ; Friendship: That Shiver, That Aspen, CRAC Alsace, Altkirch (2024), SYMMETRICAL SPACE POPS, Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2024) ; La Ferme de la Chapelle, Lancy, Geneva (2023) ; Peintres, CACY, Yverdon-les-bains (2023) ; Un Lac Inconnu, Bally Foundation, Lugano (2023) ; Agora, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2023) ; Etat des Lieux, Espaces d’art indépendants, Maison Gaudard, Lausanne (2023) ; (Un)Certain Ground, KBCK, Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art, Bienne (2023) ; Inventaire, MAMCO, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2021) ; Hans Emmenegger, Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne (2021).
Caroline Bachmann’s exhibition has been produced with the support of the Leenaards Foundation.
The CEC is at Genève 2025 with Marie Angeletti, John Armleder, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Liz Craft, Guillaume Dénervaud, Jason Dodge, Giulia Essyad, Sylvie Fleury, Gina Folly, Dorothy Iannone, Tobias Kaspar, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Jonathan Monk, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret, RM, Caroline Schattling Villeval, Denis Savary, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Nicolas Trembley, Paul Viaccoz, Heimo Zobernig
MY CRAFT. Before publication 11 is a conversation between Véronique Bacchetta and Nicolas Trembley, focusing on his curatorial practice and his growing interest in decorative arts, crafts and ceramics. In this conversation, Nicolas Trembley explains the history of the Japanese Mingei movement, on which he has organised five exhibitions, and its place in contemporary art. This conversation unfolds by examining the role of the exhibition curator; not only in terms of selecting, choosing and building coherent and meaningful collections of works of art and craft objects – sometimes even from everyday life – but also in terms of creating displays and organising the architecture of the exhibition space.
Nicolas Trembley, MY CRAFT. Entretien avec Véronique Bacchetta sur l’exposition, l’artisanat, l’art, les hiérarchies culturelles et les typologies, Before publication 11, brochure, 44 pages – single booklet, 17,2 × 23,5 cm, offset, stapled binding, 250 copies – published in the Before publication collection, which gathers the pre-publications of authors’ texts or artists’ inserts, which will appear regularly and as a preview before the final publication, L’Effet papillon II (second volume of L’Effet papillon, 1989 – 2007, catalogue of the Centre d’édition contemporaine published in 2008). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2024.
In 1996, Heimo Zobernig produced an emblematic edition for the CEC. At the time, Zobernig’s focus was on handmade and artisanal objects. His method? Printing old, damaged and broken lithographic stones. These stones, of which there were 15, were simply polished, then coated with black ink, the printing being limited to a simple transfer onto the paper, revealing shapes and lines resulting from the breaks in these modified surfaces, as they were. These 15 lithographs were reduced to a black, monochrome surface, each printed in an edition of four copies, one e.a. and one H.C. These black rectangles or squares on a white background bore direct comparison to Malevich’s historic black square, with all the distancing, irony and mischief contained in this gesture. Zobernig deconstructs and simplifies the historical references to modernism and minimalism with which his work is associated, shifting them to the field of design and graphics. The technical criteria of a craft – at the time, lithography – are also taken literally: a surface coated with ink, transferred directly onto a sheet of paper, the only motif being the lines of the breaks in this series of stones, found in an old stockpile, forgotten and unusable. A kind of game with a local situation, that of this obsolete workshop from another time, playfully reactivated.
Zobernig pushes his quest for simplification, clarity and neutrality to the level of the simple object. Artistic expression is reduced to a minimum. His strategies include objectification, reduction, standardisation and systemisation. This distancing enables him to shift his perspective, to cultivate a pragmatism that is always tinged with irony, free from pathos, and foremost determined by an unwavering search for autonomy. In reality, Zobernig approaches text like a graphic designer; colour like a “scientist”; objects like an industrialist; space like a scenographer or an architect.
The artist’s production system is broken down into several series, including the shelving structures and bookcases that seem to have been inspired by the famous Billy model, emblematic of Ikea furniture shops. An ironic reference, perhaps, to the modules created by Donald Judd or those used in Robert Morris’ scenographies. These bookcase-structures first appeared in his solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich in 2011, then at the Museum Bärengasse in 2015, at the KUB in Bregenz and, more recently, at the Mumok in Vienna in 2021. These large series of bookcases are transformed into exhibition displays, architectural structures that intersperse, enter into dialogue with, and sometimes exalt or outright transform the architecture of these institutions.
For some years now, Zobernig has been introducing colour and material variations into his work, as well as sculptural figures, like mannequins in a shop window: non-gendered, schematic, standard human bodies. Geometric, modular figures with balanced proportions, envisaged as elements of architecture, in the image of Le Corbusier’s Modulor. Other stereotypes spring to mind, emblems of the monumental statuary: from ancient statues to the robot-women in Metropolis, Georg Kolbe’s sculpture Der Morgenfor Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion in Barcelona, and even statuettes from the Oscars or Hollywood film credits.
Zobernig introduces a break with this monumental, authoritarian classicism. He manipulates, deconstructs, literally turns his figures upside down and sometimes even disguises them. As composites, they are made up of several body parts from different sources: the artist’s head or body glued to bits of old sculptures. Others are reduced to their production method: from 3D to the first bronze casts, left in their raw, unfinished state, broken, more or less well reconstructed, oxidised, chipped or rusted. Some mannequins hang from the shelves of his bookcase-structures, twisted, dislocated, more dramatic, oscillating between mummified, digital and archaic beings.
Zobernig also uses his own body, practising self-reference and self-mockery. In a video made in 1989 (No. 3), he dances, wearing an improbable wig with long hair made of chiffon. He re-enacted this scene in 2023 (no 33), wearing a similar outfit. His body and gestures had changed, becoming stiffer, clumsier, more tired: distancing and irony applied to himself.
Heimo Zobernig’s exhibition at the CEC features a range of productions and editions: five metal bookcases; three screenprints in three combinations of colours and three different qualities of paper (black/white/silver), made up of horizontal lines and the words SELF SHELF EDITION: self-editions, self-shelves, shelf-editions. SELF SHELF, the phonetic proximity of these two words, typographical too, with an extra H between SELF and SHELF, H as in Heimo, H as in a shelf. A play on sounds and words, an association that Zobernig makes with humour between himself and a shelf. These “crosswords” could well have been the title of this exhibition: objects produced, edited and exhibited together with their production system. Shelves, screenprints, flyers and posters produced in Vienna and Geneva, by Zobernig and the CEC, from a distance.
The three 50 x 70 cm screenprints, each with a print run of 10, are also available as flyers (200 copies of one of the screenprints on a white background, paper size: A4) and three posters (three copies, in F4 format). Each of these large posters is printed in black, breaking down and recomposing the different elements: one poster with only the horizontal lines, another with only the words, and the third with the lines and the words.
Heimo Zobernig was born in Mauthen in 1958. He lives and works in Vienna. Some of his most recent exhibitions include: Heimo Zobernig & László Moholy-Nagy, Galerie Nagel Draxler Crypto Kiosk, Berlin (2024); Heimo Zobernig, Galerija Manuš, Split (2024); Richard Hoeck/Heimo Zobernig, 1997/2013, Meliksetian Briggs gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Heimo Zobernig, Meyer Kainer Gallery, Vienna, (2024); Heimo Zobernig, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2023); Heimo Zobernig.Der Bildhauer als Zeichner, Kunstraum St. Virgil, Salzburg (2023); Das GrafischeWerk, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2022); Heimo Zobernig. tHIs oLD nEw, Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt (2022); Enjoy, MUMOK, Vienna (2021); Heimo Zobernig.Spirit Fuck Painting, MARe, Bucharest (2022). His work has also featured in various group exhibitions, including ECCENTRIC. Aesthetics of Freedom, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2024); Kiesler Today.Work dialogues with contemporaries, Kunsthaus Zug, Zug (2024); Bernard Frize, Matt Mullican, Niele Toroni, Heimo Zobernig, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp (2024); From the Collection: Together – Collaborative Art Practices, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2024); Dan Graham.Optics and Humor, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2024); Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich (2024); Soliloquies, Petzel Gallery, New York (2024); Blank.Raw.Illegible. Artists’ Books as Statement(1960-2022), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2023) ; HERE AND NOW II. Vienna Sculpture 2023, Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Vienna (2023); Out of the Box, Schaulager, Basel (2023); Alvin Baltrop, WadeGuyton, Heimo Zobernig, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich (2022); Avant-garde and Contemporary Art, Belvedere Museum Vienna, Belvedere 21, Vienna (2022); The Drawing Centre Show, Consortium Museum, Dijon (2022).
Giulia Essyad uses her body as both an investigative tool and a physical projection surface, immersing it in fantastical cinematic universes inspired by medieval legends, pop culture and cyborg aesthetics. This composite, hybrid, technological body enables her to escape binary gender classification. Through ultra-sensuality and glamour, and an over-determination of the codes of extreme femininity, Essyad invites viewers to critically deconstruct self-representation and the contemporary body. The body becomes a militant, iconic vector, released from taboos, canons and aesthetic stereotypes, a means of breaking free from essentialist, naturalist tendencies and simplistic dichotomies such as nature/culture, man/woman, human/animal, etc.
In a very free, syncretic style, the artist articulates concepts that range from animism to polytheism, by way of fantasy. She draws on a vast, multicultural range of natural and supernatural phenomena, myths and more traditional, ancient beliefs. In this multifaceted universe, which is simultaneously digital and archaic, the artist creates avatars of herself, metamorphosed into marketing material worthy of the most over-produced advertisements. They oscillate between an amused, assertive animality and a sophistication that would make digital or Hollywood sisters of Ann Lee or Betty Boop, ancient nymphs or modern mermaids. These dolls are transformed into warriors, their bodies liberated from imposed norms and the codes of classical beauty.
This is not Giulia Essyad’s first collaboration with the Centre d’édition contemporaine. In 2015 and 2016, she presented two readings on the occasion of the exhibition of the collective sound edition Artists’ Voices produced in 2016, made up of three vinyls: a poem, Poetry Reading December 2016, and a text, Prophecy Podcast 1. In 2022, the CEC edited Blueberry Studies.Before publication 8, part of the Before publication collection linked to the catalogue L’Effet papillon, 2008-2025, as well as a print, temple-piss19-psd, 2020, an edition offered to members of the CEC association in 2022.
Giulia Essyad is presenting a new body of work specially produced for the INNARDS exhibition, as well as a new edition, Unspeakable (i’m ready), 2023-2024. The latter consists of photographic reproductions of a series of nude images taken as part of a Pro Helvetia residency in Bengaluru, India, in 2022. Unspeakable (i’m ready) includes five photographs of the artist experimenting on herself with the Japanese bondage technique known as shibari. This sexual practice became popular in Japan in the 1950s, before gradually becoming an “art” performed by masters whose techniques were exported and popularised in the West. Giulia Essyad reinterprets them in a more personal and empirical way, for example in the performance Rosabel…BELIEVE (Perrrformat, Zurich, 2022).
From a technical point of view, these photographs are black-and-white reproductions of images that were produced using the wet collodion process – a photographic technique dating from 1860, made famous by the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the precursor of chronophotography – , in postcard format, on thin sheets of Plexiglas. Sixty-five of these reproductions were individually wrapped in transparent plastic boxes and packaged like computer products, before being bound together with an elastic band in groups of five photographs.
The Unspeakable (i’m ready) edition, like a pack of nudes for sale, is presented in a display inspired by the layouts of electronics stores. The exhibition space calls to mind the interior of a mobile phone shop: in the centre of the room, several phones are laid out on a table. These are actually little cobbled-together lightboxes: DIY objects made from hot glue and salvaged phone cases, rudimentary reproductions of these communication tools. Essyad’s imitations of these indispensable everyday objects are deliberately jerry-built, but jubilantly so. Smartphone cases are transformed into substrates, the exclusive backdrops for her self-portraits, her stagings of herself and her character: low-tech showcases for a body that is both deconstructed and augmented, uninhibited, futuristic and cyborg-like. For Essyad, IT tools (telephones, USB cables) and terminology (RAM, external hard drives) are metaphors for the human body, its venous and nervous systems, its memory, brain and entrails (INNARDS).
The artist, herself a central figure in this provocative, no-holds-barred body of work, offers an alternative to the dictates of a perfect physique, exposing the nudity of a body that oversteps the norms imposed by contemporary society, social networks and unattainable standards. Giulia Essyad humorously turns these tools of ultra-communication to her advantage by modifying them in a deliberately sloppy way. She mocks them, attempts to destroy them from within, well aware that it is almost impossible to free oneself completely from them.
Her overexposed, hypersexualised character claims a right to difference and self-determination, as a means of being totally oneself through a joyful, exuberant theatricality. She plays with the products of over-communication and over-information, in a world that claims to be totally transparent whilst paradoxically producing a double bind of coercion, control and intolerance.
Giulia Essyad is a Swiss artist, born in Lausanne in 1992, who lives and works in Geneva. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in various venues in Switzerland and abroad: INNARDS, CEC, Geneva (2024); Tunnel Vision III, Tunnel Tunnel, Cinema Bellevaux, Lausanne (2023); Chocolate Factory, Cherish, Geneva (2020) ; Blue Period, Lokal Int, Bienne (2020); A Selene Blues, Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2020); Herstory, Tunnel Tunnel, Lausanne (2016); Faces of the Goddess, Quark, Geneva (2016); Immortality, Forde, Geneva (2015); Hunter, MJ Gallery, Geneva (2014). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Bourses de la Ville de Genève 2024, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2024); Of Bodies in Digital Life, Kunsthaus, Langenthal (2024); Swiss Media Art – Pax Art Awards, HeK, Basel (2024); Swiss Art Awards, BAK, Basel (2023); Jane of All Trades, Schmorévaz, Paris (2023); A performer’s misfits, Oxyd, Winterthur (2023); Ja, wir kopieren, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn (2023); Prix Mobilière, Art Geneva, Geneva (2023); Claustrophobia Alpina, curated by Varun Kumar, Forde, Geneva (2022); Unbetrauerbar, For, Basel (2022); Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, CAC, Geneva (2021); Octobre Numérique:Faire Monde,Pays d’Arles (2021); Fotoromanza, Le Commun, Geneva (2021); Contrology, Kunsthaus Riehen, Basel (2021).
Giulia Essyad’s exhibition is supported by Erna und Curt Burgauer Foundation, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation and Inarema.
With the editions, artist’s books and multiples of Marie Angeletti, John Armleder, Artists’ Voices, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Liz Craft, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Caroline Schattling Villeval, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz
Each of Denis Savary’s artwork is the fruit of thorough research into fields as varied as history, art history, literature and sometimes even science. The result of this process is a series of cross-referenced pieces, whose hybridity also plays out at a technical level. Savary values collaboration with craftspeople from different trades (glass, carpentry, ceramics, tapestry, etc.), which works as an opportunity for him to explore their knowledge and to experiment with techniques. At first sight fragmented, his work produces an abundant and heterogenous world, filled with objects charged with a multitude of mythologies, a patchwork of personal memories and references — literary, musical, historical, and folkloric — transformed or reinterpreted.
These intertwined mentions constitute a mental archive, a sort of non-hierarchical library made of extracts, flashbacks and shortcuts between art history, literary figures, between fascination for a variety of artisanal techniques and scientific informations. Savary’s work seemingly belongs within this generic and playful sense of research: the emphasis shall be put on the manufacturing of the objects, prior to their transformation into actual artworks. Therefore, the process itself is fundamental, as a research system, empirical as well as experimental, a never-ending stream of thoughts. If production is carried out upstream, these new propositions might still be reworked, recombined, and modified during the exhibition set-up. Savary is an artist who favors continuity over finality, as a way of escaping the finiteness of the work and remaining curious and receptive to new narratives.
The exhibition title itself, Quiet Clubbing, works as a common thread running through several editions that come together in a nocturnal, festive atmosphere, through which light beams, plays of transparency and dancing movements occur: a collection of glass objects, a video, and a series of posters. Savary’s objects, being transformed and offbeat, filled with references and modified with technical manipulations pushed to the limits of feasibility, are the products of a sensual enjoyment of craftsmanship and the manipulated matter. In a way, one could argue that Savary invents ultra-pop objects, sort of giant toys, unreal, which build an eerie theater from one exhibition to the other.
For the CEC edition, Campfire, Savary invoked the image of the wood fire. This edition is made of seven glass objects produced by the workshop of master glassmaker Vincent Breed, in Brussieu in Lyonnais, with whom Savary has been collaborating since 2013. The choice of the wood fire works as a reference to the origins of the birth of glass. Following Pline the Elder, the first glass was made by accident around 2000 years B.C. by Phoenicians nitre (sodium carbonate) dealers who were lighting a fire on a beach. The heat emanating from the fire, in contact with nitre and silice coming from the sand, generated a chemical reaction which allowed for glass to form.
The idea for this project goes back to 2021, when the artist began an experimental work session on glass. One of the collaborations between Denis Savary and the glassmaker consisted of covering various wooden objects in molten glass, in order to eventually recover the molding. Savary based his edition on the same precedent. These seven unique shapes were made as a technical challenge: reproducing in glass a campfire built with wooden elements. The aim was to cover this highly flammable material with molten glass and obtain its imprint: to destroy and to create with fire, to let emerge out of this incandescent matter a glass silhouette, transparent and liquid, a ghost which would contain the traces and the souls of the wood and the fire; an achievement that evokes the alchemist’s gesture — an artist as alchemist. These aquatic objects made of glass produce luminous diffraction effects that recall the series of images installed in a panorama: aurora borealis seen from a beach covered in snow, between sky and sea, between the shadow of the night of the Far North and the spectral, iridescent waves of the northern lights.
This passage of light is reversed in a new video produced especially for this exhibition, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, realized with the help of Geoffrey Cottenceau for the photography and Nicolas Ponce for the editing. The first few seconds suggest a CGI animated video reminiscent of the slow, slightly jerky movements of obsolete computer screensavers. Then, little by little, one can enter into the image as in a dark room, where the eye struggles to find its way around and to discern shapes and objects. Architectural elements progressively appear thank to the spotlights of the nightclub, but it then becomes quickly noticeable that this space is a mere illusion. Indeed, the single object of the video is one of the Villa series’ miniature houses that Denis Savary exhibited in the Bernheim gallery, in Zurich, in 2021 (Ithaca). Now working as a projection surface, the Villa II welcomes on its walls another video, Le Must, which was realized by Savary in 2004 and which describes, in still image, a light show inside a nightclub. The video was the central motif of his solo exhibition Baltiques, in 2012, at the Kunsthalle Bern. This mise en abyme actually dissimulates a voluntary play of inversion, of movements and passages, from the inside to the outside, a sort of interpenetration of private and public spaces.
Blood on the Dining-Room Floor borrows its title to Gertrude Stein’s first detective novel, written after the successful Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. As she lived recluse with her partner, Alice, in the French village of Bilignin, Stein started writing this novel, inspired by the various events and intrigues of the small hamlet daily life. Her country house then becomes a location from which Stein could observe this microcosm filled with underlying violence. With this video, Savary looks back to a specific period in his work, in the beginning of the 2000s, when he was producing videos mostly from or within the immediate environment of his family home in Vaud. Realized in miniDV, a bygone production mean, these videos represent an era where the house worked as a studio and as a vantage point overlooking the world. Curiously, amongst the miniature houses of the Villa series, the one chosen for Blood on the Dining-Room Floor is the one which looks the most similar to the artist’s old house.
In his version realized for the CEC website, the video is accompanied by an eponym sound piece, a work commissioned to the artists composers Maria Esteves and Mathilde Hansen. The sound and the image are merged and seem to be out of sync, as a dance off the beat. Progressively, the house’s motion slows down, and reveals the complexity of a mutli-track House sound from which emerges a voice that chants extract from Gertrude Stein’s novel. The video dissimulates a pun, between the musical genre of House music and the main subject of the film, the artist’s childhood house. Set in a rotating movement, the miniature house from the Blood on the Dining-Room Floor video reminds of dance-floor disco balls projecting rays of colored light: a light show, like the festive counterpart to the northern lights on the Quiet Clubbing posters, or the mysterious reflections caught in the transparency of the glass objects in the Campfire edition.
Denis Savary (1981) lives and works in Geneva. His work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, such as : Josy’s Club, with Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Synagogue de Delme, Delme (2023) ; Octogone, avec Chloé Delarue, Mayday, Basel (2023) ; Flower of Fog, GNYP Gallery, Berlin (2022) ; Ithaca, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich (2021) ; Ambarabà Cicci Cocco, with Alfredo Aceto, Stiftung Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Saint Gall (2021) ; Ventimiglia, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021); Phantom, Lemme, Sion (2021). His many recent group exhibitions include : Temps de Mars, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2024) ; The Big Chill, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2023) ; Mirage, MCBA, Lausanne (2023) ; Deep Deep Down, MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2023) ; The Puppet Show, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2022) ; Inventaire, Mamco, Geneva (2021) ; Ballard in Albisola, Casa Jorn House, Albisola (2021) ; La Suite – Regards sur les artistes des collections des Frac, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2021) ; Body Double, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021). In 2024, Denis Savary’s work will be the subject of several solo and group exhibitions: Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan ; Denis Savary, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London ; Roma, Roma, Roma, Rolex Learning Center, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. In 2025, he will be exhibited at KBCB Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art, Biel.
Zsuzsanna Szabo, production manager, is in charge of digital transformation projects for the CEC (2021-2024)
Denis Savary’s exhibition has been produced with the support of the Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, the Leenaards Foundation, the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and Canton of Geneva.
Before attempting to unravel the meaning, or meanings, behind the title of this exhibition, ENCORE TROP, we can consider a couple of quotes by John Armleder from the recent catalogue of a group exhibition he curated, It Never Ends, John M. Armleder & Guests (Kanal – Centre Pompidou, Bruxelles, September 2020). The title of this solo and group exhibition seems to imply a perception of time and space that distances itself from the definitive. Armleder feeds on the propositions, the circumstances as well as the context to make his choices : « I always work following the logic of the space and the people who invite me […] »1. Here, we find a very seventies philosophy, horizontal, a philosophy of delegation, where the very existence of the work of art is shared by all, in a limitless and open-ended interaction which considers the means of production, the exhibition spaces, and finally the viewer as entirely part of the creative process. In the same catalog one can find the sentence chosen as the exhibition title at the Museion of Bolzano in 2018 : « Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. » (« The more it changes, the more it remains the same. »)2
This observation echoes perfectly the circumstances of the exhibition at the CEC, ENCORE TROP, which follows our first collaboration in 1992, more than 30 years ago, when we produced a series of 21 engravings (etchings and monotypes), all unique, which offered a range of different types of print : monochrome surfaces resulting from the inking of an industrially sanded plate, drippings of acid that, when inked, would transform into colorful printed drips, or simply trinkets and glitters directly thrown onto the plate, which would then be crushed and melded with the paper under the pressure of the press roll. Comment from the time: « Etching gives John Armleder the freedom to use the same « motifs » over and over again, with little to no work. In contrast to the traditional practice of using a plate to reproduce the same etching in several copies, John Armleder starts from four matrices treated differently in order to produce a set of dissimilar prints. Thus, he can choose various combinations – superimpositions, inversions, color inking. Without any pre-established system, the decisions depend on the circumstances, the flaws and the successes of each print run. John Armleder rediscovers this freedom of choice which allows him to oscillate between etching and pictorial effects, between free abstraction and geometry, between necessary and relative, between style and non-style, between self-criticism and distancing. »3
Indeed, everything changes and nothing changes. The monotypes exhibited today at the CEC recall the ones produced and exhibited in 1992 : monotypes, unique pieces, available in series, where everything is kept as is. In the series currently exhibited, Shady place for sunny people (2024), three large sheets display drips, and four others, almost fully white, are in reality protective sheets, marked with colored residual imprints from the pressure of a weighed system, which allowed the transfer of masses of ink on the first ones, and left the traces of their overflows on the second ones. These simple stains also echo the « splashes », recurring stylized motifs in Armleder’s work, here screenprinted, gold or silver, on two sets of paper sheets, pink or yellow, mounted on cardboard, recovered from an edition produced in 1979, a leporello, Lézards Sauvages IIa/ « égouttés ». Each leaflet used to display a printed reproduction of a comb, whole or broken, found on the streets of Geneva. This harvest offered Armleder the casualness of a stroll and the recovery of a pre-existing object : a performance which lasted the time of his journeys, and a ready-made form, an abstract, random and unselective grid, which made the series possible.
This new edition keeps the same title while continuing the numbering begun in 1979, Lézards Sauvages III and IV, (1979) 2024. The recovery of old material from more than 40 years ago, 1979/2024, suggests a crushing of time, between nostalgia and newness. A continuous creation cycle between recovery and self-citation, which eludes the linearity and finality of the retrospective, blurring the lines of dating, archiving and conservation, preferring « the semicolon, the comma to the full stop. »4
Concerning the comb metaphor, beyond Duchamp’s ready-made or Armleder’s iconic braid, worn unchanged and at all times, the notion of gap deserves consideration, the gap between the teeth of the comb, between the spread hair, regrouped, shaped, as a philosophy of the gap and of the side step, important for the artist collective Ecart, founded in the 1970s by Armleder and two friends, Claude Rychner and Patrick Lucchini. One can also think of the comb as a simplified brush, both literally « brushing », brushing but not really, to paint as to brush, a distanced, ironical gesture, far from expression and pathos, a sort of mechanised painting, which prefers the arbitrariness of dripping and the mechanics of transfer. No need for further research on artistic and linguistic metaphors, as Armleder himself prefers to keep a distance from text and analysis : « In my work, I am in favor of getting rid of the text and its constraints on comprehension. »5
For Armleder, the harvest of the combs, this action, and the leporello edition of 1979 are part of an equivalent whole, as the unused recovered sheets of this leporello will serve as the background of our two screen prints, Lézards Sauvages III and IV, (1979) 2024. Added to these three steps, the edition of a multiple, an engraved comb, once again a comb, ENCORE TROP, a sort of return to the real object, as for him « There is no gap between art and other objects». He then follows : « Art is not singular, and is absolutely not useful. Art is only inevitable. »6
Véronique Bacchetta, March 2023 (trad. Flavia Vuagniaux)
John Armleder was born in Geneva in 1948, where he lives and works. His work has been displayed in numerous solo exhibitions, such as : On ne fait pas ça, Massimo de Carlo Milano (2024) ;Experiences, Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully (2023), Pour la planète, Palais Galerie, Neuchâtel (2023), Yakety Yak, Mrac Occitanie, Sérignan (2023) ; Again, Just Again, Rockbound Art Museum, Shanghai (2021) ; « It never ends », Carte Blanche to John M Armleder, KANAL, Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2020) ; CA.CA., Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019) ; Spoons, moons and masks, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2019), Quicksand II, MAMCO, Geneva (2019) ; 360°, MADRE – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (2018) ; Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, Museion, Bolzano (2018) ; Stockage, Instituto Svizzero di Roma (2017) ; À Rebours, La Salle de Bains, Lyon(2017). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including : Monotypes, Edition VFO, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2023) ; &, MAMCO, Geneva (2022) ; Stop Painting, Fondazione Prada, Milano (2021) ; Ecart at Art Basel, MAMCO, Geneva (2019) ; Medusa – Jewellery and Taboos, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2017). In 2024, John Armleder’s work will be the subject of several solo and group exhibitions : Never-Nevermore, Lovay Fine Arts, Geneva ; Renverser la tâche, Galerie Catherine Issert, Saint-Paul-de-Vence ; Transparents, Musée Barbier-Müller, Geneva ; Galerie Elisabeth and Klaus Thomas, Innsbruck.He is represented by a number of galleries : Massimo de Carlo Gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, Almine Rech Gallery, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri. His artwork are part of permanent collections of many museums, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris ; the Museum of Modern Art, New York ; the Long Museum, Shanghai ; the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles ; the Kunstmuseum Basel ; the Fondation Museion – Museum of contemporary and modern art, Bolzano ; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
1 “Quatre entretiens avec John Armleder”, “It Never Ends”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 192. 2Ibid., p. 193. 3 Véronique Bacchetta, extract from the press release for John Armleder’s exhibition at the CGGC/CEC from 11 June to 18 July 1992. 4 “Point, virgule, point-virgule”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 201. 5 op.cit. p. 192. 6 Extract from a quotation by John Armleder at the beginning of the postface, Yves Goldstein, “It Never Ends (Postface)”, It Never Ends, John M Armleder & Guests, éd. Yann Chateigné Tytelman, KANAL – Centre Pompidou et Lenz, Bruxelles, 2024, p. 190.
With publications and editions by Marie Angeletti, Artists’ Voices, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Tobias Kaspar, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Caroline Schattling Villeval, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz, Jean-Michel Wicker
At the bottom of an almost dry lake, frogs are gathered around a puddle. Their movements, slowed down and almost imperceptible, bring life to this deserted landscape. A dog appears. Imposing, his body extends beyond the frame. His walk sets off a panoramic, moving shot.
Thus begins Caroline Schattling Villeval’s video When a frog meets a dog, produced for her exhibition Carences et toute-puissance1. This new piece functions as a continuation of her installation good boy (Hasch, Marseille, 2023) which revolved around the fictional text Vie/Chienne, that explores the question of domination arising from a non-consensual interaction between a person and a dog with a wandering tongue2. Once again, the animal is one of the main protagonists of Caroline Schattling Villeval’s video When a frog meets a dog, this time alongside a group of frogs.
With his massive, slender body and golden fur, the dog, animated by Caroline Schattling Villeval, moves forward in a menacing manner. He appears to be indifferent to everything, including the amphibians which have come together to stop his march. Piled up in the shape of a column, they form a mass in front of this manifestation of almighty power. The counter-power embodied in the group’s strength is swept away, pushed aside by a paw. It’s not strong enough. A crushing failure even: it’s raining frogs. They splash into the exhibition space, contaminating the room. The almighty power triumphs over the collective strength. End of the story. However, in Caroline Schattling Villeval’s work, the power dynamics also manifest themselves in an underlying manner through the technical process. A dog, frogs, a 3D-modelled bestiary bought online like one would adopt a pet: an act of domination. Then comes the computer, far from functioning autonomously as the artist manipulates her virtual puppets through an animation software. Finally, the dog, never fully visible, dominates the frogs as well as the space. The dog, the first animal species domesticated by Man – its « best friend » –, that Caroline Schattling Villeval has trained to perform its own dance. The image is replayed in a loop, but who’s calling the shots? When a frog meets a dog is a canvas onto which power dynamics are superimposed in infinite layers.
When the dog and the frogs meet, bodies blend and collide. Objects of power, they gain, or attempt to gain, the upper hand over those who oppose them. In the video No, no no healthy trust, the question of the body remains, in this case individual as well as biological. The theme of power is approached through the topic of well-being. For Caroline Schattling Villeval, the interest in care as a concept emerged through the discovery of the feminist self-help movements of the 1970s. The movement was initiated on one hand as a reaction to the masculine domination in the health system, and on another hand as a set of contemporary artistic practices which were articulated around said movement. In Europe, the Feminist Health Care Research Group, formed in 2015 in Berlin by Julia Bonn, Alice Münch and Inga Zimprich took inspiration from the West German Health Movement in order to create spaces to welcome collective research around exhibitions, workshops or zines as tools to think about and construct a more radical health system. As an empowerment process, individual education notably revolves around learning DIY practices within a communal setting, as a way to propose a collective alternative to the dominant health system.
In the video No, no no healthy trust, a small green plant agitates itself in a jerky trance. Is it the result of drug consumption within a festive setting, or maybe dietary supplements consumed to provide a daily energy boost? Regardless of whether it’s one or the other, the specter of the neoliberal economy seems to loom large. Caroline Schattling Villeval’s characters are often offbeat, submerged by a world which overflows with possibilities to get better, always better. They seem to be in a perpetual well-being quest, an investigation of happiness. Happiness, as it was formulated by Martin Seligman, co-founder of positive psychology next to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, follows a hyper-individualist logic; To reach happiness depends on one’s will to undertake a series of important actions as a way to achieve a sustainable blissful state. How convenient for capitalism! Supported by the good vibes only slogan, the wellness industry takes off in the beginning of the 2000s: happiness can be bought. Yoga, pilates, diets, detoxes, miracle morning, beauty care, meditation, self-development, spiritual retreat: so many practices that guarantee a better life, evolving at the pace of supply and demand, standardising bodies and minds while detaching them from any kind of collective commitment. Health is no longer limited to fighting diseases, and now encompasses attempts to perform better, self-optimise, compensate hypothetical deficiencies3. For one’s own sake?
Last convulsions: a wellness overdose. Nothing left from the little plant in No, no no healthy trust but a glass skeleton, similar to a relic. A safety pin and chains are used to suture the wounds on this damaged body. The remains of a life in search of happiness.
Christine Glassey (trad. Flavia Vuagniaux)
1. In parallel with her exhibition at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Caroline Schattling Villeval presents StéréoMimicryat the Salle Crosnier, Palais de l’Athénée, from January 12 to February 10, 2024. 2. Vie/Chienne was written by Caroline Schattling Villeval in 2023 for [SWISS] Weird & Magic #1, forthcoming publication by éditions Clinamen. 3. According to the WHO Constitution, which came into force in 1948, « health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. »
Born in 1995 in Zürich, Caroline Schattling Villeval lives and works in Geneva. Her work has been exhibited in various venues in Switzerland and abroad in solo shows such as : StéréoMimicry, Salle Crosnier, Geneva (12.01–10.02.2024) ; good boy, Hasch, Marseille (2023) ; No firing, with Paul Paillet, Espace 3353, Carouge (2021) ; Chiara Chiara Chiara, Zabriskie Point, Geneva (2020) ; Being fucked, Lokal-int, Biel (2020). She has also taken part in several group exhibitions, including: Basel Social Club with Joyfully waiting, Basel (2023) ; MINIMIRACLES, Sonnenstube, Lugano (2023) ; Bourses déliées – Arts Visuels, Halle Nord, Geneva (2022); Prix Kiefer Hablitzel, Art Basel, Basel (2022) Esprit d’Escalier, with Paul Paillet, Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva (2022) ; Plaisirs Minuit, Forde as part of the Fesse-tival, Geneva (2022) ; Peeping through the looking glass, Set Space, London (2021) ; Fotoromanza, Le Commun, Geneva (2021) ; Silicon Malley, Prilly (2020) ; Weaving home, Limbo Space, Geneva (2020).
Caroline Schattling Villeval’s exhibition is supported by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DCS, Geneva, and the Office fédérale de la culture, de la République et canton de Genève.
With publications and editions of Marie Angeletti, Artists’ Voices, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz
Gina Folly’s work focuses on everyday life, on the interactions between the private and public space, between the intimate and social realms. She takes a precise, ironic and subtly critical look at the objects, messages and situations that surround us on a daily basis, which she retains, photographs and isolates in order to modify them and transpose them into the field of art. This gesture of appropriation, transformation and exhibition questions their real function, their purpose and above all the epistemological impact that these ordinary materials can have on our lives. She dissects them in order to reveal their poetic and dramatic potential, and their psychological and political impact.
The objects chosen by Folly question our condition as human beings, catapulted into an often hostile and coercive society. She endeavours to highlight the intrinsic contradictions, the underlying and imperceptible violence, lurking in all the signs of power that flood the social and political space, and parasitise our lives.
Folly chooses a variety of seemingly banal objects, such as boxes, electrical circuits, chains, padlocks, light bulbs, fans, handles and locks, eyelets and pregnancy tests. She extracts them from their context, transforms or duplicates them, slightly modifying the materials, formats, colours or finish, and recombines them with other objects, accentuating the feeling of constraint, hindrance and confinement.
In 2019, she intervened in the public space for the Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel. Outside, Folly installed a large photograph of a bookshelf belonging to a friend she had stayed with. The title, Fashion, Sex and Death – Science – Sports, Gardens and Conspicuous Consumption, simply transcribes the labels that are stuck on the shelves, indicating the classification themes which group together the words “fashion” and “sex” with “death,” “sport” with “garden” and “conspicuous consumption.” Without alteration, this labelling already suggests a commentary and a political questioning. The framing of the photograph, a close-up on these few shelves, precludes an overall or interior view, accentuating the feeling of suffocation already induced by the themes chosen to arrange these books. This work is emblematic of that which underpins Gina Folly’s work and determines its critical scope.
On the occasion of this exhibition, she spoke about her work and her commitment in a discussion with Inès Goldbach, the director of the Kunsthaus Baselland and the curator of the exhibition, which appeared in the book Listening to Artists (published byédition VfmK Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2022):
“My works almost always generate from a photograph. I’m keeping a sort of diary, mostly taken with my phone. I document my daily life as an observer. They’re architectural structures, objects and social events that make our daily life easier, disrupt it, make it more complicated, or ones that I don’t understand. Especially because of that, it can become interesting to document them. These moments mostly vanish again in my archive. I go back to them when I’m working on a specific project. They result in mostly approbate objects that I reproduce and specify. These processes are about entering relationships. Be it getting to know the person who produced the object I’m attracted to, or who knows the reason of its existence, or to find the right producer to make exact replicas of the respective works.”
In 2023, for her series of photographs exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, Gina Folly opted for a simple medium-format film camera with which she photographed members of the Quasitutto association of retired people, which offers all kinds of day-to-day support services. For another project, also in Basel, she distributed small disposable cameras to a number of children, so that they could take photos of their favourite works on display at the Basel Social Club, the fair that took place during ArtBasel 2023. In these two projects, the shooting is simple, on a 1:1 scale, with no aesthetic overkill, be it in terms of the framing, image processing, gesture, intention, recording. All of these parameters remain the most important, with no stylistic effects, no aesthetic overkill, no technical, dramatic or sentimental effects. A simple document, like an image seen in “real life,” whose recording method perfectly reflects Folly’s desire to remain in the background.
This absence of pathos allows viewers to project their own feelings, memories or experiences onto these very neutral, open images. These “implicit” images create an open space for appropriation and projection. Paradoxically, they have a greater impact on viewers’ memories, making them more endearing.
The objects chosen by Folly are often not commercial products; they are made or transformed by their user for a very specific, functional, practical use; they are inexpensive, devoid of luxury or decoration. Like the fountains for refreshing coconuts that can be found on beaches. Built by the farmers themselves – a kind of DIY –, adapted to their use and made with “the means at hand.” The fountain exhibited in June 2023 at the entrance to the Basel Social Club, during ArtBasel, was the perfect replica of one them.
Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fischli and Weiss, and even Ed Ruscha have all worked in series, establishing a principle beforehand, a subject for collection, a pretext for repetition, multiplication of images or objects, made or appropriated, linked to everyday life. But whereas these artists practised a distancing, offering us a glimpse of our world through the prism a critical and necessary irony and scepticism, Gina Folly does not shy away from a compassionate dimension, in an inclusive gesture, never looking down on her subjects. By simply capturing everyday life, her environment and residual micro-events, however minute they may be, her works always bear witness to a society that is trying to maintain a precarious balance, a fairness and humanity that are so often abused. This empathy and awareness of otherness is the sign of a shift into another era.
As part of her exhibition project at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Gina Folly will be producing an edition, a series of bouquets of preserved flowers presented in cardboard boxes coated with a varnish that protects against humidity and makes the boxes shiny. Each box bears an inscription, a very short phrase found randomly on a horoscope application that predicts the day ahead: slightly simplistic aphorisms, advice, judgements or trivial, absurd prophecies, whose meaninglessness and naivety create a poetic or downright comedic effect.
The process of preserving the flowers in this edition consisted of replacing the sap with glycerine, so that the plant retains a living appearance for many years, without the need for any special care. Once the bouquet has been preserved, no external intervention is required to ensure that the plants retain their original freshness. They are protected from wilting, frozen in a state of almost eternal flowering, but their colour is transformed: the petals take on a light grey-pink tint, almost black and white. A light, subtle, refined metaphor for the passage from life to art.
Gina Folly’s second project for her exhibition at the CEC will feature a frame containing a single sachet of seeds from the “Dolce Vita” flower mix – a reference to the title of the exhibition. The name of the mixture and the brand of these seeds, SELECT, allows Folly to intuitively and emotionally put this existential and philosophical question into perspective. What determines our choices, be they individual or collective? How does this infinite multitude of choices – from belief in chance, to the notion of the preconditioned unconscious, from chaos to consciousness and freedom of choice – influence our paths and our lives?
Gina Folly was born in Zurich in 1983. She lives and works between Basel and Paris. In recent years she has presented several solo exhibitions, including: Autofokus. Manor Kunstpreis 2023, Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart, Basel (2023); Solo presentation, Ermes Ermes, Paris Internationale, Paris (2019); Fashion, Sex and Death – Science – Sports, Gardens and Conspicuous Consumption, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2019). Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions such as: CITY SALTS: THE GINA SHOW, Salts, Basel (2022); WHIMSIES, Essener Kunstverein, Essen (2022); THINK, AND THEN THINK AGAIN, Sgomento Zurigo, Zurich (2022); ORCA – Duo-Show with Philipp Timischl, Fondation Fiminco, Paris (2021); PRK-1U, Tonus, Paris (2021); A Part, Kunstkredit, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2020); Reality Companions, Motto Berlin, Berlin (2020); Groupshow, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2019); life and limbs, Swiss Institute, New York (2019).
Gina Folly’s exhibition is supported by Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation and Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture.
Published by Claude Balls Int. in December 2022, Marseille Edited with Gianmaria Andreetta, Marie Angeletti and Camilla Wills 21 x 28.5 cm, 416 pages, edition of 840
6:30 pm: Conversation with Gianmaria Andreetta and Marie Angeletti
Contributions from : Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, Georgia Sagri, John Kelsey, Matthew Pang, Cathy Wilkes, Sarah Rapson, Nick Irvin, Gene Beery, Anne Dressen, Anne Pontégnie, Jacqueline Mesmaeker, Sara Deraedt, Anne Rorimer, Kari Rittenbach, Olga Balema, Maria Nordman, Louise Lawler, Julie Ault, Martin Beck, Adrian Morris, Matt Browning, John Miller, Envers Hadzijaj, Enzo Shalom, Bedros Yeretzian, Morag Keil, Helmut Draxler, Gianna Surangkanjanajai, Steve Cannon, Rae Armentrout, Zoe Hitzig, CIPM, Pierre Guyotat, Lola Sinreich, Fanny Howe, Georgia Sagri, Hélène Fauquet, Marie Angeletti, Richard Hawkins, Andy Robert, Alexander García Düttmann, Daniel Horn, El Hadji Sy, Henrik Olesen, Aurélien Potier, John Miller, Richard John Jones, Stéphane Barbier Bouvet, Nora Schultz, Peter Fend, Megan Francis Sullivan, Jill Johnston, Sturtevant, Tonio Kröner, Bernard Bazile, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Jérome Pantalacci, Gérard Traquandi, Gladys Clover, Maria Wutz, Jimmie Durham, Richard Sides, Camilla Wills, Michael Callies, Steven Warwick, Matthew Langan-Peck, Dan Graham, Nina Könnemann, Hans Christian Dany, Valérie Knoll, Win McCarthy, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Anna Rubin, Heji Shin, Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Inka Meißner, Simone Forti, Morgan O’Hara, Angharad Williams, Ye Xe, Lily Van Der Stokker, Yuki Kimura, Peter Wächtler, Eva Steinmetz, Michael Van den Abeele, Marc Kokopeli, Bradley Kronz, Robert Grosvenor, Samuel Jeffery, Charlotte Houette, Adam Martin, Wade Guyton, Chloe Truong-Jones.
Biennale di Veneziávs. Karim Benzema Invited by Véronique Bacchetta vs. Federico Santiago Valverde Dipetta Other People’s Clothes vs. Rodrygo Goes Étudiants aux Beaux Arts vs. Eden Hazard Uber Triennale Curatior vs. Vinicius Paixao de Oliveira Junior Crits’n’Reviews vs. Toni Kroos Caravaggio’s Chiaroscuro vs. Jesus Vallejo Lazaro Your Artist Fee vs. Aurélien Tchouaméni Mille Plateaux vs. Eder Gabriel Militão RM’s Instagram Erotic vs. Luka Modric Artistas Unidos Vámonos vs. Daniel Carvajal Ramos
Until the End, Come on Real.
A Play (Off) by Miriam Laura Leonardi, April 2023
SOLO TÚ RM at CEC 2023
Until last summer we used to go by a name written Real Madrid, pronounced either rɪəl məˈdrɪd, or ře’al ma’ðrid. After legal threats by a namesake company we had to disown that moniker and disclose being unpatented knockoffs. It was a matter of ticking time, of who trademarked facts first and once – for the moment we use the shortened RM but pronunciation stays unaltered. We want this show to be an unbaptism, a debut against copyrighted one-off geniuses, an and to a story, a stack of counterfeit merch and a spoonful of the shared minestrone of ideas, and also another unoriginal show about identity.
The b/w images you see have been taken by Mathilde Agius.
RM
The RM’s exhibition is supported by Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation and the City of Geneva.
Friday April 28th, 2023 – Jeffrey Vallance, The Gospel According to Jeffrey, video of the performance at the chapel of Saint-Léger, Geneva, 82’, sound, English, 2012
The CEC is launching a video production project, initiated as a consequence of the pandemic and the need to develop digital resources. The project will take place in several stages, most often in relation to the CEC’s programming. This series of short films will be posted regularly on our website. The videos will be divided into three chapters under the generic title “Films”: “Recent videos”, “Documents” and “Archives.” The “Documents” section will mainly present interviews with artists, critics or curators; the “Archives” section will make it possible to discover or rediscover some of the videos created in the context of exhibitions, events or editions from the 1990s onwards.
A group of four new videos, produced between 2022 and 2023, with Guillaume Dénervaud, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret and Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, as well as Paul Viaccoz, is now available on our modified and expanded website, thanks to Niels Wehrspann (graphic designer, Lausanne), and will be screened at the CEC, from March 16th to April 28th, 2023, with a private view on Thursday, March 16th, 2023, from 6 pm to 9 pm, as part of la Nuit des Bains.
Videos: new and revisited will open with Paul Paillet’s video, screened from March 16th to 24th, 2023, and Guillaume Dénervaud’s, from March 28th to 31st, 2023. These two artists exhibited at the CEC in 2020 and 2021, during the first two years of Covid-19.
For this invitation, Paul Paillet has directed a hypnotic and psychedelic video-clip, working from a series of collages with zingy colours. Handmade, these collages were then digitised and enhanced with special effects. Reminiscent of vertical smartphone screens, the ultimate symbol of the rapid and uncontrolled circulation of images taken on the fly, Surprise/Innocence is a mixture of low-tech and high-tech. The animation follows a filiform figure with aquatic movements, crossing a landscape of hills against a backdrop of a setting sun and more or less enigmatic architectures. This character moves to the rhythm of an increasingly frenetic live performance by the collectives Tamal Nuisances and Csters, recorded at the Teknival de Chambley in 2004. This Hardtek soundtrack is strangely linked to the album Wings (2016) by the South Korean interplanetary boy band BTS, whose members read extracts from the novel Demian.Die Geschichte einer Jugend by Hermann Hesse (1919). Paul Paillet intentionally takes up this sampling technique which is emblematic of electronic music, especially that of the Free Party movement. This film is a nod to the installation Tin Can BTS Radio (Wings), which was presented during the artist’s solo exhibition fascination for fire which opened at the CEC in September 2020.
AGLOROMONES is Guillaume Dénervaud’s first video. It presents a selection of images shot outdoors, embodying the research and concerns linked to the era of the Anthropocene, which underpin the artist’s entire body of work. Filmed on the route that separates Guillaume Dénervaud’s former residence in the 18th arrondissement of Paris from his studio in Saint-Denis, the images document the artist’s daily observations in this rapidly-transforming part of the city. AGLOROMONES presents a series of filmed scenes between abstraction and reality, a crossing of these interstitial and peripheral spaces, transit areas between the city and the countryside.
The programme will continue with the screening of two documents, directly related to the exhibitions of Paul Viaccoz, Mai-Thu Perret and Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, which took place in 2021, 2022 and 2018.
Recorded in January 2022 in Paul Viaccoz’ studio in Courroux, Murs chamaniques. Commentaires is an extension of his ESPRIT ES-TU LÀ ? exhibition. In the voice-over, the artist recounts his spiritual journey to encounter illness and death. The film also presents a visual journey, a tracking shot which encompasses his collection of objects, often linked to personal memories or mystical images, that make up the Murs chamaniques which the artist has been continuously developing in his house and studio for the past few years. Day after day, he assembles objects taken from nature or from everyday life, fetishes and talismans which are then juxtaposed or combined with photographs, drawings, screenshots of his videos, postcards, masks, musical instruments, skulls and crossbones, sabres, dried flowers, feathers, jewellery and pieces of embroidery. This collection of objects, images and texts forms a mural puzzle, rearranged according to the artist’s moods, reflections and lived experience.
The Conversation in English between Mai-Thu Perret and Matthew Lutz-Kinoy opens a series of filmed interviews, which will continue with the one recently recorded at the CEC between Liz Craft and Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue. Conversation is an opportunity for the two artists to revisit the Scrolls in the Wind. A collection of scripts and poems by Harry Burke, Cyrus Grace Dunham, Sharon Hayes, James English Leary, Sophy Naess, Amy Sillman and Emily Sundblad edition (2018) by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, and Mai-Thu Perret’s My Sister’s Hand in Mine (2022), both produced by the CEC. This exchange reveals the complicity between two artists with unique backgrounds, but especially their shared interest in traditional craft practices and their curiosity about various techniques and trades, which they revisit regularly. They share this reflection and this blurring of the boundaries between arts and crafts.
This first round of screenings will conclude with the presentation of four videos from the CEC archives, one per day for four days, from April 25th to 28th, 2023, some of which have been remastered and reformatted for our expanded website: Detroit on Circle by Alexandre Bianchini, Brave new world, March 2020 by Liz Craft, Cosmic Storm, Cern by Gianni Motti, The Gospel According to Jeffrey by Jeffrey Vallance.
In collaboration with Zsuzsanna Szabo, coordinator and production manager
The project Videos: new and revisited is supported by the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and Canton of Geneva.
Recent « Before publications » of Paul Bernard and Giulia Essyad
With Marie Angeletti, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Liz Craft, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz, Niels Wehrspann
In 2021, the Centre d’édition contemporaine published New York & Beyond, 2017-2019, which brings together a selection of the artist’s works presented in the United States or Europe, as well as photographic memories of lived situations, encounters and intimate family moments. So many memories captured by Liz Craft and her entourage between 2017 and 2019. The 40-page brochure, a kind of diary in images, covers the three years that the artist spent in New York.
Liz Craft, New York & Beyond, 2017 – 2019, publication, digital printing, colour, 40 pages, 15 x 21.2 cm, 500 copies, stapled binding. Text: Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue (English). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2021.
As a follow-up to the publication, the CEC has invited Liz Craft to create a new exhibition, which will take place from November 5th, 2022, to February 3rd, 2023.
For this exhibition, Ms. America, Liz Craft will be creating a new installation composed of a group of about twenty figurines of different sizes, in the image of Pac-Man, the character from the Japanese video game created in 1980. Probably inspired by the smileys of the 60s, it was used in the 90s by rave culture, including Aphex Twin aka Power-Pill, which is just as yellow as our contemporary emoji’s. If video games like “Space Invaders”, which involved killing aliens and aggressive invaders in a warlike atmosphere, Pac-Man, invented to attract women and increase the number of players, features a small, seemingly harmless, bright yellow glutton in the shape of a pizza missing a slice, who continuously devours small lozenges whilst being stuck in a maze and attacked by relentless ghosts. But what are we to make of this hero, who met with phenomenal success in the West, and especially in the United States, by being constantly hungry, insatiable, permanently dissatisfied and condemned to a state of perpetual failure? How to interpret this voracious little being, endlessly consuming, a non-stop seeker of instant gratification, experiencing short phases of pleasure thanks to a magic gum, forever forced to start over in its crazy consumer race, in a never-ending acceleration? And thus, our cute Pac-Man is turned into a compulsive consumer, totally addicted to sugar, pharmaceuticals, and drugs, caught in the net of the “always more” proposed by the great capital, be it legal or illegal.
The Pac-Man of Liz Craft and Ms. America have fittingly big yellow heads adorned with big red bows and are wrapped in a big black tunic. Presented as a group, they oscillate between a howling choir and a cult of furious, grotesque, and menacing madmen, begging to be released from this hell.
Liz Craft (1970, Los Angeles) lives and works in Berlin. Her exhibitions have included those at the Real Fine Arts Gallery, New York, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, Jenny’s, Los Angeles, and at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt between 2015 and 2022. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, such as: Cavern, at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2022); Do You Love Me Now? at the Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum, Bremerhaven (2022); Escape From NewYork at the baby Company, New York (2019); QUERELA at the Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon (2019); Watching You Watching Me at Jenny’s Gallery, London (2018). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Kreislaufprobleme at Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019), Tranted Loveat Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Sueurs Chaudes at South Way Studio, Marseille (2017); Medusa. Bijoux et tabous at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2017).
From May 13 to July 8, 2022
Continuation of the exhibition from August 9 to October 21, 2022
Marie Angeletti, Paul Bernard, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Liz Craft, Guillaume Dénervaud, Jason Dodge, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Fabian Marti, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret, Caroline Schattling Villeval & Paul Paillet, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz
Presentation of Paul Bernard’s publication, « Guy would never have done that. » Debord Curator, as part of the Nuit des Bains, Thursday, September 15, 2022, at 7 pm.
The CEC takes part in the Nuit des Bains on Thursday May 12, 2022, from 6 to 9 pm (Vernissage)
The CEC takes part in Weekend GENEVE.ART on Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, 2022, from 11 am to 6 pm
Marie Angeletti, RAM, artist’s book, digital print, photocopies, black enamel on acrylic, silver paper, colors, 27,5 x 21 cm, 5 copies including 1 A.P., numbered. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2022.
CHF 1’000.-
Marie Angeletti, RAM, fanzine, digital print, photocopies, silver paper, black/white, colors, 27,5 x 21 cm, slipped into a white paper slip cover, 100 g/m2, 20 copies including 1 A.P. and 1 H.C., numbered and signed. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Genève, 2022.
CHF 50.-
Paul Bernard, «Guy would never have done that.» Debord Curator, Before publication 9, brochure, 44 pages – single booklet, 17,2 × 23,5 cm, offset, stapled binding – published in the Before publication collection, which gathers the pre-publications of authors’ texts or artists’ inserts, which will appear regularly and as a preview before the final publication, L’Effet papillon II (second volume of L’Effet papillon, 1989 – 2007, catalogue of the Centre d’édition contemporaine published in 2008). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2022.
CHF 15.-
Giulia Essyad, Blueberry Studies, Before publication 8, brochure, colors, 32 pages – single booklet, 17,2 × 23,5 cm, offset, stapled binding – published in the Before publication collection, which gathers the pre-publications of authors’ texts or artists’ inserts, which will appear regularly and as a preview before the final publication, L’Effet papillon II (second volume of L’Effet papillon, 1989 – 2007, catalogue of the Centre d’édition contemporaine published in 2008). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2022. ISBN : 978-2-9701369-6-5
CHF 15.-
Giulia Essyad, temple-piss19.psd, 2020, poster, offset, two colors, Algro Design glossy laminated paper 180 g/m2, 98.5 × 49 cm, 150 copies, 14 A.P. and 10 H.C. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2022.
Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2022.
« Guy would never have done that. » Debord Curator, Before publication 9, brochure, 44 pages – single booklet, 17,2 × 23,5 cm, offset, stapled binding – published in the Before publication collection, which gathers the pre-publications of authors’ texts or artists’ inserts, which will appear regularly and as a preview before the final publication, L’Effet papillon II (second volume of L’Effet papillon, 1989 – 2007, catalogue of the Centre d’édition contemporaine published in 2008). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2022. ISBN: 978-2-9701369-7-2
Paul Bernard is director of Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne.
In 2018, the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Genève (MAMCO) presented Die Welt als Labyrinth, an exhibition devoted to the early years of the Situationist International (S.I) and the various movements it derived from. Conscious of the complexity of such a project, we began to work on it a year earlier, setting up a curatorial committee (composed of Lionel Bovier, Gérard Berréby, Julien Fronsacq, John M Armleder, Mai-Thu Perret, Swana Pilhatsch-Morenz and Luca Bochicchio) which enabled us to quickly get in touch with a network of specialists. For my part, I was able to travel to Paris, Albissola, Prato, Venice, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Silkeborg in the space of a year to meet collectors, historians, curators and artists who were more or less directly related to the S.I. Nearly all of these meetings were fascinating, supportive and even downright enjoyable. But there were a few condescending grimaces from people who found our project to be deplorable. How indeed to conceive an exhibition about the Situationists without distorting the meaning of their action?
From the first paragraph of Paul Bernard’s text, “Guy would never have done that.” Debord Curator, Before publication 9, ed. CEC, 2022
The CEC at I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel 2022.
With publications and editions of Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Mai-Thu Perret, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Oscar Tuazon, Paul Viaccoz, Jean-Michel Wicker
Artists’ Voices, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Giulia Essyad, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Paul Viaccoz, Jean-Michel Wicker
Marie Angeletti, Laurence Bonvin, Harry Burke, Liz Craft, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen et Nick Mauss, David Hominal, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Dorothy Iannone, Paul Paillet, Paul Viaccoz
Opening, Thursday November 25, 2021, from 6 to 8 pm
Nocturne du Quartier des Bains Thursday January 27, 2022 from 6 to 8 pm
View of the exhibition Marie Angeletti, Ram, CEC, 2021.View of the exhibition Marie Angeletti, Ram, CEC, 2021.Marie Angeletti, Untitled, print on silver, 30 x 42 cm, unique edition, 2021. Exhibition Marie Angeletti, Ram, CEC, 2021.Marie Angeletti, 334 POLISHED BALLS, November 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 2021, 334 polished pétanque balls, 2021 (detail). Exhibition Marie Angeletti, Ram, CEC, 2021.
Ram This show has been planned since September 2018. I have provided reasons when no reason is apparent, I have been called on to share my intentions: as if an explanation can be clear and firm. While what I’m advocating by doing, and this is what the Marseille group exhibition did too: an image is never alone and constantly in the process of being made ; here and now.
Mirror foil, 2021
The inside of the gallery is impossible to be seen from the street during the day. When the sun goes down the inside becomes visible, the outside is a reflection, the viewer is framed by night (without seeing who is watching from the outside). Sunlight changes the corpus of the show. Through the foil, the sun alternates the form and life within (which implies passage of time). The artificial light condition of the inside is on 24 hours. (Genève, ville paranoïaque). (images of the mirror foil are recommended to be taken with flash)
According to no plan, I polished 334 balls this month. I could do 8 balls per hour. I had to alternate between 2 and 3 balls, since the rotations plus the metal were making the balls really hot. I polished them until they became mirrors. Mouvement répéter en avançant – moves repeat as you move forward. Depending on the metal, the polishing results were not the same for each ball, some were easier than others. Two cylinders rotating with immediate result, exhaust it until you have no time left. Machine-like feeling, metal emancipated, the mind off. Life lives in them. Don’t think – don’t panic – don’t spin off – or whirl etc. Sometimes my feet weren’t even on the ground which could cause an electric shock. In Boson de Higgs, called la particule de Dieu, the only thing that did not turn into mass was light. Change matter into energy. Smell it and feel their heat. I followed investigate with enthusiasm whatever turns you on. Is it what you desire that creates your quality? Two rotations, ie. frottement (rubbing), massaging them was extremely sexual. Group masturbation, mass attraction, loud sound, breathing metal, repetitive rotations – doing repetitive movement. My hand was slippery from the polishing gel, balls kept on falling with a loud sound on the floor. Attempting to get higher in one’s ability. How to fuse into the present? Never stop moving – rubik’s cube – instability – keeps on changing form. Energy has long wavelengths, I condensed four years (of thinking about the show) in these 10 days of polishing balls. I didn’t abandon the work, I stopped because I had no time left. (images of the polished balls are recommended to be taken with flash)
n.b. November 2nd : 37 balls polished – falls : November 3rd : 26 balls polished – falls : November 4th : 16 balls polished – falls : November 5th : 20 balls polished – falls : 17 November 8th : 22 balls polished – falls : 11 November 9th : 34 balls polished – falls : 12 November 10th : 55 balls polished – falls : 6 November 11th : 34 balls polished – falls : 5 November 12th : 24 balls polished – falls : 4 November 18th : 28 balls polished – falls : 4 November 20th : 34 balls polished – falls : 8 November 22nd : 16 balls polished – falls : 3 November 23th : 35 balls polished – falls : 7
The accident comes from somewhere (images of the silver prints are recommended to be taken with flash)
Ram I show it all in my own time, and from scattered locations, conditioned by light and the inability to arrive in here. Reverse the years. Qu’est-ce qui se joue dans les silences? Amplification – I feel for the trees across at Cimetière des Rois.
Merci à Véronique, Olga, Camilla, Gianmaria, Henrik, Stefan, Ye, Fabrice, Dora, Win, Anna, Steve, Hajid, Varun, Delphine – le grand bleu – startle – wiggle – dizzled
Marie Angeletti’s exhibition is supported by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DCS, Geneva.
« … Souvent, il séjournait dans cet espace pour trouver le calme et l’inspiration. Dans un carnet, il prenait des notes accompagnées de croquis et de plans pour de futurs projets. Les murs blancs de la maison, la vue sur le jardin et les arbres étaient propices à la méditation et parfois à la lecture. Il pensait qu’un moine jardinier aurait pu se retrouver dans la même situation que lui, à l’écart du monde, du vacarme et des brutales réalités de la vie. Ces murs laiteux ressemblaient à ceux d’une chapelle. Par un jour de printemps, il décida de peindre de petites saynètes et des paysages directement sur ces parois immaculées. … »
Extract from the text by Paul Viaccoz, ESPRIT ES-TU LÀ ?, published in Before publication 5, éd. CEC, 2021.
Exhibition from May 6 till July 9, 2021
and from August 17 till September 10, 2021
Harry Burke, Timothée Calame, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Fabian Marti, Paul Paillet, Susan Te Kahurangi King
The CEC opens during the Nuit des Bains on Thursday May 6, 2021, 12:00 to 21:00 and Thursday September 2, 2021, 18:00 to 21:00.
The CEC opens during Weekend GENEVE.ART on Saturday May 29 and Sunday May 30, 2021, 11:00 to 18:00.
During the Nineties, when Elise was at school in the English countryside, there was a constant flow of UFO sightings and crop circles, in which complicated but harmonious patterns of spiralling orbs would appear cut into wheat fields overnight, and reports of ethereal abductions on lonely country roads. These abductions were usually in the United States, and again happened overnight. Aliens would come down and snatch American men and sodomize them, for their experiments. The Nineties were fantastic, she thought. Now that old sense of excitement about and openness to the cosmos was gone. There were no more lights in the sky, no more encounters of any kind. No more geometry appeared on the farms. Steel monoliths sometimes arrived on Romanian hillsides and deserts. But no one thought about space anymore. What was space good for now?
Monica Bonvicini, Harry Burke, Guillaume Dénervaud, Anne Dressen/Nick Mauss, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Mathis Gasser, Katie Holten, Dorothy Iannone, Jakob Kolding, Mads Ranch Kornum, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Victor Man, Paul Paillet, Josef Strau, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance, Jean-Michel Wicker and Artists’ Voices
Paul Paillet’s solo exhibition at the Centre d’édition contemporaine was intended to open in March 2020, but was postponed due to lockdown until September 2020. For this exhibition, Paul Paillet has developed a proposal drawing on numerous references that insect and overlap, creating an ensemble of several pieces: sculptures and a mural work in porcelain, a newspaper, a radio and a publication. Each of these elements contains various cultural and personal indices that construct a kind of staged presentation. The theme of fascination for fire is partly autobiographical, linked to a reflection on a return to the artist’s adolescence, his adventures and darker moments in his past, which result in semantic shifts, from the private sphere to more critical and committed societal and political implications. Continue reading “Paul Paillet Fascination for fire“
Artists’ Voices, Harry Burke, Timothée Calame, Liz Craft, Keren Cytter, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Victor Man, Fabian Marti, Jonathan Monk, Susan Te Kahurangi King
Thursday January 30 12PM – 7PM Friday January 31 12PM – 8PM Saturday February 01 12PM – 8PM Sunday February 02 12PM – 7PM
Fabian Marti sees his artistic work as a chance to explore ideas about the place of the artist and the individual in society and in the field of production. This type of questioning, which brings him closer to conceptual art, allows Marti to view his practice as a way of challenging the divides between traditional techniques, conventional modes of creation, customary terms of exchange right through to the artist’s status. He goes back to more archaic technical choices, and the handmade in particular, reappropriating craft skills such as ceramics. As for the shift in the artist’s function, Marti is involved and participates in the creation of exhibition spaces, artists’ studios and publishing houses. The Zurich space Hacienda, TwoHotel, Marti Collection, Marti Ceramics and FM Studio Chairs are simultaneously both art objects and small “companies”, places or structures that facilitate production projects, both for Fabian Marti himself and for invited artists. Continue reading “Fabian Marti Such a Good Girl“
The CEC at P.A.G.E.S. Salon du livre d’artiste et de l’imprimé contemporain, Genève
Friday December 6, 2019
4 PM – 9 PM
Saturday December 7, 2019
10:30 AM – 7 PM
Sunday December 8, 2019
10:30 AM – 5 PM
HEAD – Genève
Bâtiment H
Av. de Châtelaine 7
1203 Geneva
Timothée Calame, Keren Cytter, Philippe Decrauzat, Jason Dodge, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Hominal, Dorothy Iannone, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Victor Man, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance, Jean-Michel Wicker
A diminished poetry. An expanding (and contracting) writerly. Fragments, for Rindon Johnson
Before publication 1
Brochure published in the Before publication collection, which will gather the pre-publications – unique notebooks of 4 to 24 pages, 17.2 x 23.5 cm, offset, black/white, stapled binding, 250 copies – of authors’ texts and artists’ inserts, which will appear regularly and in preview of their final edition in L’Effet papillon II (second volume of L’Effet papillon, 1989-2007, the catalog of the Centre d’édition contemporaine published in 2008).
Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne
Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, December 2019
OTHER RECENT EDITION
Susan Te Kahurangi King
Selected Works 1965–1980
Offset, colours, 20 pages, 16,5 x 23,6 cm. Coedition innen, Zurich and Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2019.
Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2019.
Selected Works 1965–1980 from Susan Te Kahurangi King is part of a series of three publications coedited with innen, Zurich of which Eros Paintings by Dorothy Iannone published in Spring 2019 and New York & Beyond 2017–2019 by Liz Craft (forthcoming).
Gerard Byrne, Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Keren Cytter, Philippe Decrauzat, Jason Dodge, Sylvie Fleury, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Tobias Kaspar, Jakob Kolding, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Erik van Lieshout, Christian Lindow, David Maljkovic et Konstantin Grcic, Victor Man, Mélanie Matranga, Jonathan Monk, Olivier Mosset, Gianni Motti, Florian Pumhösl, Markus Schinwald, Oscar Tuazon, Jean-Michel Wicker, Heimo Zobernig
Cut-price %
Thursday March 14, 2019, 6-9 PM (Quartier des Bains common openings)
and
Saturday May 4 2019, 12-5 PM
January 31-February 3, 2019
Preview: 30 janvier 2019
stand D4, halle 1, Palexpo, Genève
View of the CEC’s installation
View of the CEC’s installation
View of the CEC’s installation
View of the CEC’s installation
ground
(edited and curated by Harry Burke and Marlie Mul)
Khairani Barokka
Simnikiwe Buhlungu
Amy DG & Samantha Dick (Where People Sleep)
Marlie Mul
Precious Okoyomon
Kirsten Pieroth
Linda Stupart
The Gate
WAGES FOR WAGES AGAINST
Jean-Michel Wicker
+
Editions of the CEC
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
Jean-Michel Wicker
Presentation of the new edition of Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
Scrolls in the Wind A collection of scripts and poems by Harry Burke, Cyrus Grace Dunham, Sharon Hayes, James English Leary, Sophy Naess, Amy Sillman and Emily Sundblad
Edited by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
ground
Curators : Harry Burke and Marlie Mul
Presentation of the zine ground – first edition launched in 2018 – edited by Harry Burke (writer, critic, editor, and indepndant curator) amd Marlie Mul (artist, born in 1980 in Utrecht, lives and works in Berlin) with contributions by The Gate, Linda Stupart, Jean-Michel Wicker, Khairani Barokka, Reader’s Digestion, Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable et Marlie Mul.
“In collaboration with Centre d’edition contemporaine for artgenève, Harry Burke and Marlie Mul, the editors of ground, will curate a selection of prints and editions by artists featured in both their recently published first zine and in their forthcoming second publication. ground is an independently distributed zine that aims to look beyond institutions, in their current form, as the dominant spaces and frameworks in which to present and deal with artistic production, and instead explore grassroots political and aesthetic alternatives. The presentation at artgenève will highlight the ways that artists are using publishing and printmaking to achieve these aims, and will involve work by artists who are often underrepresented in international commercial presentations such as artgenève.” (Harry Burke)
Talk by Marlie Mul, presentation of the zine ground, art talks & performances, Saturday, February 2, 2019, artgenève 2019
Presentation of the edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2018
Thursday, January 17, 2019, 6 – 9 PM (Common openings of the Quartier des Bains)
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, What to wear to a concert? Tips for concert outfits: wear your best punk jacket with the right patches! « A patch meant to be fixed to the back of your jacket depicting relevant cultural affiliations »
Silkscreen print on raw cotton, 36 × 48 cm, safety pins, postcard, 150 copies, edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2019. Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2018.
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s primary medium might be painting, but it often goes beyond two-dimensional space to extend to its surroundings, becoming decor or pieces of furniture. This expansion of the pictorial space is seen both in the choice of subjects and in the enlarged and repeated stylized motifs. His large format paintings, often installed like decorative tapestries, wall panels or suspended ceilings, stages the exhibition space in which viewers are physically immersed. This highly spatial and physical approach to painting expresses Lutz-Kinoy’s special relationship with the body and gesture, and explains the extension of his work into dance and performance. For his recent exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon, a vast system of murals, inspired by François Boucher’s painted panels that once decorated a boudoir and are now displayed at the Frick Collection in New York, entirely covered the walls of this white cube. This fascination with the refined, sophisticated and carnal painting of the 18th century brought out its erotic and transgressive nature against a backdrop of sensual and sexual liberation.
For his exhibition at the CEC, Victor Man invites Navid Nuur not so much to create a common work but rather to establish a dialog and to underline a certain kinship between their artistic practices: their use of traditional and handcrafted techniques – watercolour for the one and ceramics for the other -, their common references to materials that bear strong symbolic and poetic meaning – minerals, water, fire -, their personal and artistic background, but also their ties to childhood, to memory and perhaps to nostalgia. A shared way of revisiting the significant initiatory stages that rendered this duo possible and natural, offering an installation alternating the watercolours of Victor Man and the ceramics of Navid Nuur. Continue reading “Entrelacs Victor Man invites Navid Nuur”
Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, François Curlet, Keren Cytter, Philippe Decrauzat, Jason Dodge, Trisha Donnelly, Sylvie Fleury, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Hominal, Aaron Flint Jamison, Raphaël Julliard, Tobias Kaspar, Jakob Kolding, Elke Krystufek, M/M (Paris), Jonathan Monk, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance, Oriol Vilanova, Jean-Michel Wicker, Heimo Zobernig
From March 23 till May 5, 2018 Opening Thursday March 22 from 6 PM to 9 PM
Keren Cytter, The Brutal Turtle, Book, offset, colours, 40 pages, 15 x 15 cm, an edition of 500, text in English. Coedition Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen and the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2018.
Keren Cytter, The Furious Hamster, Book, offset, colours, 56 pages, 15 x 15 cm, an edition of 500, text in English. Coedition Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen and the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2018.
Presentation of three small children books, The Curious Squirrel (2015), The Brutal Turtle (2018) and The Furious Hamster (2018), of recent drawings and three objects on wheels
For the CEC booth at artgenève, Keren Cytter presents a little reading room for children with a series of recent drawings and three volumes on wheels: a red ball, a yellow pyramid, a blue cube, objects that are between mobile shapes and children seats. This childlike environment will serve as a display for the book, The Brutal Turtle and The Furious Hamster, both coproduced by Jacob Fabricius, artist director at Kunsthal Aarhus, who runs Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen and the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva. Continue reading “artgenève 2018 Keren Cytter“
Presentation of the edition offered to the 2017 members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association
Jonathan Monk, Directional Advice, one colour silkscreen print with clear varnish coating, Algro Screen cardboard 1260 g/m2, Ø 40 cm, edition of 150, signed and dated on the reverse, printed by Christian Humbert-Droz, Geneva, die-cut by Decoform, Geneva. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2017. Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2017.
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Editions by Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, François Curlet, Jason Dodge, Sylvie Fleury, Mathis Gasser, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Hominal, Tobias Kaspar, Jakob Kolding, Oscar Tuazon, Oriol Vilanova, Jean-Michel Wicker, Heimo Zobernig
Saturday and Sunday November 11 and 12, 2017
11 AM – 6 PM
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Thomas Hirschhorn, Flashforward, Saturday November 11, 2017, CEC
Itinerant presentation of the facsimile of the publication Les plaintifs, les bêtes, les politiques
Signing session in the presence of Thomas Hirschhorn
Saturday November 11, 2017 from 1 PM
Thomas Hirschhorn, Les plaintifs, les bêtes, les politiques, offset printed brochure, CMYK color model, glossy coated paper, 80 g/m2, 231 × 24 cm, 208 pages. Original edition by Centre genevois de gravure contemporaine/Centre d’édition contemporaine (CEC), Geneva, 1995 and edition of the facsimile, ed. Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, 2017.
Exhibition October 13 – November 25, 2017
Opening October 12, 2017 from 2:30 PM
Editions by Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, François Curlet, Philippe Decrauzat, Jason Dodge, Sylvie Fleury, Mathis Gasser, David Hominal, Tobias Kaspar, Jakob Kolding, Mélanie Matranga, Giuseppe Penone, Oscar Tuazon, Oriol Vilanova, Jean-Michel Wicker, Susanne M. Winterling, Heimo Zobernig
Focus: Mélanie Matranga
View of the exhibition Edited by the CEC! Focus: Mélanie Matranga, CEC, 2017
View of the exhibition Edited by the CEC! Focus: Mélanie Matranga, CEC, 2017
View of the exhibition Edited by the CEC! Focus: Mélanie Matranga, CEC, 2017
Mélanie Matranga’s artistic approach is crossed by stories that infiltrate a production of objects, installations, films, and even pieces of furniture and reconstructions of interiors that are loaded with signifying signs, texts and images: drawings, photographs, prints, projections. These combined elements propose “situations” that interrogate intimacy and seem to be filled with sensations and residual feelings, receptacles where real life experience and imagination, the document and the scenario meet. Continue reading “Edited by the CEC! Focus: Mélanie Matranga“
Jean-Michel Wicker, #picturebook1, edition of the CEC, 2017
From 6 PM Book Launch: #picturebook1 by Jean-Michel Wicker, presented in collaboration with The Printed Room, SALTS and the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva
With a reading by Harry Burke and a specially produced flyer by Jean-Michel Wicker
From 6 PM Presentation of Jean-Michel Wicker’s edition, #picturebook1, artist’s book, offset, 27 × 28.5 cm, 396 pages, including 360 pages in colour and 36 pages in black on LuxoArt Silk 150 g/m2 paper, glossy colour cover, LuxoArt Silk 350 g/m2, 10 inserts, colours, 26.5 × 28 cm, LuxoArt Silk 130 g/m2, publication of an arbre de vie produced by Jean-Michel Wicker in collaboration with Marlie Mul, a text by Harry Burke, and a recipe for Alsatian plum pie by Charlotte Wicker (French), English, an edition of 500. Graphic design: Maximage Société Suisse, London. Printing: DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg, Altenburg. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, June 2017.
For this exhibition, Jakob Kolding will be proposing a scenography reminiscent of 19th century dioramas or the photomontages of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, a small theatre that will fill all our exhibition spaces and be visible from outside, both as an installation and a public artwork. Several scaled up or down “standing” silhouettes will be grouped on this stage set, creating an interplay of juxtapositions and gaps. Each figure suggests a historical or anonymous person, illustrative of Jakob Kolding’s extended vocabulary of literary, philosophical, artistic or personal references, and encouraging a sociological, cultural and aesthetic interrogation of the use of space. While in his earlier works this critical research was more closely linked to the phenomena of the transformation of urban space and gentrification, Kolding has more recently approached different concepts of space in a broader, more open and ambivalent way, as areas where questions of identity are simultaneously complex, shifting and multiple. Continue reading “Jakob Kolding The Outside or the Inside of the Internalised Externalised“
Jean-Michel Wicker’s exhibition BBiblioteca ffanafffantastica brings together several works involving the medium of print for which the artist has worked out a number of iterations, including fanzines, scrapbooks, antibooks, book-objects, and flyers. The display will also feature supports, both literal and figurative, that have something to do with books, and other elements that extend the gesture of consultation, reading and writing, even the function of storage. This includes bookcases, display stands, showcases, tables and chairs. Other objects or useful ordinary materials like electric wires, clothing, key rings, neon lights, lamps and tarps will be transformed, cobbled together, and combined with a wide range of supports in their usual and unsurprising form or reappropriated and put to other uses. Those supports include paper, cardboard, plastic, papier-mâché, and shells. Continue reading “Jean-Michel Wicker BBiblioteca ffanafffantastica“
Centre d’édition contemporaine at artgenève
International art fair
Inside the Bubble-Booth
With Timothée Calame, Valentin Carron, Jakob Kolding, Matthew Langan-Peck, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Mélanie Matranga
For artgenève 2017 the CEC proposes a group show, Inside the Bubble-Booth, that evolves around the idea of organs and the corps morcelé. The booth of the CEC will be transformed this year into an intimate and organic space. This proposition is also a pretext for improvising on a proposed theme such as desire, intuition or a lead for a work. Each invited artist was chosen on the base of this postulate, without their works being literally an illustration of this theme, they suggest or make allusion to it.
From 6 PM Presentation of Jean-Michel Wicker’s edition, Belle étiquette, woven flyer taking the form of a mini carpet functioning as an advertisement object, polyester, black and white, high definition weaving, heat cut with fray out edges, 92 × 140 mm, edition of 1000, unsigned, weaving Bornemann-Etiketten GmbH, Wuppertal. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2016.
This edition is accompanied by a publication bearing the same title, Belle étiquette, publication, 16 pages, black/white, colours, offset on Magno Satin 130 g/m2 paper, 26,8 × 20,5 cm, 250 copies. Graphic design : Marietta Eugster and Jean-Michel Wicker. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2016.
Edition offered to the 2016 members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association.
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Mathis Gasser
In the Museum 1 2 (3), Regulators 1 2 n, artist’s book, 448 pages in black and 128 pages in colour, 17 × 22,8 × 3,5 cm, offset, on Arctic Volume White 1.12 paper 100 g/m2, cover in Arctic Volume White 1.2 paper 300 g/m2, 300 copies. Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne with Mathis Gasser. Print : La Buona Stampa, Lugano. Binding: Schumacher AG, Schmitten. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2016.
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Artists’ Voices
Triple LP with sound pieces by Rita Ackermann, Gerard Byrne, Valentin Carron, Claire Fontaine, Jason Dodge, Giulia Essyad, Sylvie Fleury, Gilles Furtwängler, Mathis Gasser, Marcus Geiger / Heimo Zobernig, Vivienne Griffin & Kaspars Groshevs, Thomas Hirschhorn, Tobias Kaspar and Jan Vorisek, Anne Le Troter, Beat Lippert, Tobias Madison, Fabian Marti, Jonathan Monk, Damián Navarro, James Richards, Emanuel Rossetti, Ryan Conrad Sawyer, Ramaya Tegegne and Ricardo Valentim, 3 picture discs in a two-piece box, 310 × 310 × 15/15 mm, 350 copies. Sound engineer: Ladislav Agabekov, Caduceus Mastering, Geneva. Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition du Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2016.
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John M Armleder, Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimovicz, Claude Closky, Andreas Dobler, David Hominal, Rosemarie Trockel and Heimo Zobernig (editions CEC), Giulia Essyad (ceramic) and Sabrina Röthlisberger (bench and book), Solar Lice (double LP, Power Station, Dallas, 2013) and David Knuckey (sculptures)
David Knuckey, Crest, 2016. John M Armleder, Sans titre, 1992. Rosemarie Trockel, Sans titre, 1996.
David Hominal, Through the Windows, 2013. David Knuckey, Crest, 2016. Andreas Dobler, Under Fire, 2007.
From 6 PM Presentation of Mathis Gasser’s book In the Museum 1 2 (3), Regulators 1 2 n, artist’s book, 448 pages in black and 128 pages in colour, 17 × 22,8 × 3,5 cm, offset, on Arctic Volume White 1.12 paper 100 g/m2, cover in Arctic Volume White 1.2 paper 300 g/m2, 300 copies. Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne with Mathis Gasser. Print: La Buona Stampa, Lugano. Binding: Schumacher AG, Schmitten. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2016.
David Knuckey, Crest, 2016
From 7 PM Readings by Marie Angeletti, Samuel Luterbacher, Marta Riniker-Radich and Angharad Williams
Until March 11, 2017 John M Armleder, Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Claude Closky, Andreas Dobler, David Hominal, Rosemarie Trockel and Heimo Zobernig (editions CEC), Giulia Essyad, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Solar Lice (double LP, Power Station, Dallas, 2013)
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Artists’ Voices
Triple LP with sound pieces by Rita Ackermann, Gerard Byrne, Valentin Carron, Claire Fontaine, Jason Dodge, Giulia Essyad, Sylvie Fleury, Gilles Furtwängler, Mathis Gasser, Marcus Geiger / Heimo Zobernig, Vivienne Griffin & Kaspars Groshevs, Thomas Hirschhorn, Tobias Kaspar and Jan Vorisek, Anne Le Troter, Beat Lippert, Tobias Madison, Fabian Marti, Jonathan Monk, Damián Navarro, James Richards, Emanuel Rossetti, Ryan Conrad Sawyer, Ramaya Tegegne and Ricardo Valentim, 3 picture discs in a two-piece box, 310 × 310 × 15/15 mm, 350 copies. Sound engineer: Ladislav Agabekov, Caduceus Mastering, Geneva. Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition du Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2016.
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John M Armleder, Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimovicz, Claude Closky, Andreas Dobler, David Hominal, Rosemarie Trockel and Heimo Zobernig (editions CEC), Giulia Essyad (ceramic) and Sabrina Röthlisberger (bench and book), Solar Lice (double LP, Power Station, Dallas, 2013) and David Knuckey (sculptures)
From 6 PM Presentation of the sound edition Artists’ Voices, with Rita Ackermann, Gerard Byrne, Valentin Carron, Claire Fontaine, Jason Dodge, Giulia Essyad, Sylvie Fleury, Gilles Furtwängler, Mathis Gasser, Marcus Geiger / Heimo Zobernig, Vivienne Griffin & Kaspars Groshevs, Thomas Hirschhorn, Tobias Kaspar and Jan Vorisek, Anne Le Troter, Beat Lippert, Tobias Madison, Fabian Marti, Jonathan Monk, Damián Navarro, James Richards, Emanuel Rossetti, Ryan Conrad Sawyer, Ramaya Tegegne and Ricardo Valentim (triple LP, ed. CEC, 2016)
7 PMRamaya Tegegne, Version #19: Judy Chicago, 2016 (reading/performance)
7:30 PMGiulia Essyad, Poetry ReadingDecember 2016 (reading) et Salamander Said, 2016 (ceramics) with Sabrina Röthlisberger, En Attendant Antarah, guerrier poète, 2015, (bench)
8 PMHAGGARD CARAVAN, composed by Stefan Tcherepnin, with recordings by Solar Lice (Jeanne Graff, Tobias Madison, Flavio Merlo, Emanuel Rossetti, Gregory Ruppe, William Z. Saunders & Stefan Tcherepnin), mixed in York House Hotel, Wakefield, 2014 (sound installation, 44’30’’)
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John M Armleder, Valentin Carron, Marc Camille Chaimovicz, Claude Closky, Andreas Dobler, David Hominal, Rosemarie Trockel and Heimo Zobernig (editions CEC)
Valentin Carron explores the principle of reality through acts of appropriation, replicating almost identically elements from popular culture, the practice of monument-making, daily life and his immediate environment. The shift in meaning is probably due more to the choice of referents than to their mere displacement in the field of art. Carron conceals the function, blunts the decorative aspect and revisits the craftsmanship-like manufacturing of these objects that oscillate between irony, affection and fascination and seem to densify as entering in contact with art, endorsing themselves with a common acknowledgement and with the nostalgia of a forgotten story. Continue reading “Valentin Carron Deux épaisseurs un coin“
Mathis Gasser draws upon and combines thousands of images that he patiently gathered and arranged in a personal archive. Their references come from the arts, architecture, cinema, comics, science fiction, magazines or from current events. In a very elaborated practice of collage, thousands of signs collide and are multiplied in an explosive combination, in a mirror or imbricating effect, diffracted by the immateriality of the digital world and by the invasion of information. The impact that Gasser seeks for through this body of reappropriated, reassociated images that are frequently reworked through drawing and painting, and caught in a sustained and invasive turnover. They oscillate between a nihilistic vision and an interrogation of the limits of a world undermined by temptations of archaism and the resurgence of primal fears, sectarian deliriums, theories of conspiracy and hyper technological and futuristic extravaganzas and other prophecies. Continue reading “Mathis Gasser Sept sont tombés vers le ciel Works on paper”
Artists’ Voices assembles a group of sound pieces linked to the theme of the voice. The voice considered as a strong marker on the unconscious, a pre-language primal expression that is directly connected to emotions and is identifiable by a body of signs: tone, vibration, timbre, rhythm. The sound pieces are songs, declamations, monologues, a reading, a discourse, a dialogue, an echo, a whisper, a noise, a scream or breathing, up to the point of rupture, dysphonia, aphonia, silence, or even the return of sound and music. Continue reading “Artists’ Voices Prolongation”
Artists’ Voices assembles a group of sound pieces linked to the theme of the voice. The voice considered as a strong marker on the unconscious, a pre-language primal expression that is directly connected to emotions and is identifiable by a body of signs: tone, vibration, timbre, rhythm. The sound pieces are songs, declamations, monologues, a reading, a discourse, a dialogue, an echo, a whisper, a noise, a scream or breathing, up to the point of rupture, dysphonia, aphonia, silence, or even the return of sound and music. Continue reading “Artists’ Voices“
Jason Dodge, David Hominal, Raphaël Julliard, David Maljkovic with Konstantin Grcic, Victor Man
With the new editions offered to the members of the CEC association:
David Hominal, Détail, silk screen print, edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2015 (edition offered to the 2014 members )
and
Jason Dodge, edition of 120 (edition offered to the 2015 members)
With editions by Philippe Decrauzat, Jason Dodge, Sylvie Fleury, Katie Holten, David Hominal, Aaron Flint Jamison, Raphaël Julliard, Mads Ranch Kornum, Erik van Lieshout, Victor Man, Christophe Rey, Joseph Strau, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance, Oriol Vilanova
For his exhibition at the CEC, David Maljkovic will create, in collaboration with the German designer Konstantin Grcic, a series of works called Negatives. The “negatives” began with Maljkovic’s Temporary Projections in 2011. For this project, the artist created a fictional studio as a projection and one of the elements in the studio was a ‘fake’ working table. In collaboration with Grcic, the table is now an actual object, and what was once a secondary element becomes a model and the focus of the work. The “negatives”, then, are tables designed by Grcic that Maljkovic transforms by using as a work surface. As the artist cuts into paper with a blade, he leaves slashes and marks on the soft surface of the table top. The result is a group of intersecting lines and marks that combine to make a geometric abstraction. Red ink is then applied to this surface, and paper applied, in a process that resembles printmaking, leaving the table top marks filled with a vibrant red. The ‘negative’ is this structure that provided a space for the edition-making process. Continue reading “David Maljkovic with Konstantin Grcic Negatives“
January 29 – February 1, 2015 from, 2 PM – 9 PM
Preview: Wednesday, January 28, 2015, 2 PM – 8 PM
Booth D18, halle 1, Palexpo, Geneva
View of the CEC’s booth
View of the CEC’s booth
View of the CEC’s booth
View of the CEC’s booth
With the editions of Sylvie Fleury, David Hominal, Raphaël Julliard, Erik van Lieshout, Victor Man, Olivier Mosset, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance, Oriol Vilanova
WINTER SALE Tuesday December 16, 2014, 6 PM – 9 PM Saturday December 20, 2014, 12 PM – 5 PM
ALPHABET EDITIONS Exhibition of CEC’s editions (1989—2014) December 12, 2014 — February 28, 2015
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
View of the exhibition ALPHABET EDITIONS
ALPHABET EDITIONS is an alphabetical display of the CEC’s editions (1989-2014), a possibility to see again everything or to purchase a book, a print or a multiple during this “winter sale”. WINTER SALE is neither a sale nor an auction or a sale, but simply the presentation of the still available editions, a new display, a Christmas market and above all a support for the CEC. Continue reading “WINTER SALE AND ALPHABET EDITIONS“
Opening Thursday September 18, 2014 from 6 PM
on the occasion of the Nuit des Bains
Exhibition from September 19 till November 29, 2014
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Raphaël Julliard, view of the exhibition CHROMOZONE
Exhibition of an installation of large pencil drawings on paper scroll and mobile wire sculptures, and the edition of an artist’s book entitled RREPTILES produced and edited by the CEC.
Raphaël Julliard is a polygraphic artist. Whether it be drawing, painting, installation work, video or performance, his work, rather than departing from a predefined idea or concept, stems from an initial impulsion that is as free and autonomous as possible, in order to arrive at the configuration induced by that same idea and its process of realisation. His work sometimes also questions the works of other artists, may them be central figures or lesser known. However, he seems to be inspired by everyday banal little things, whose existence is, in theory, considered to be insignificant. Like so, he had proceeded to the making of a classical ham-butter sandwich, from the planting of the seeds to the devouring of the sandwich, including the slaughtering of the pig and the churning of the butter (Mon Sandwich, HD video, 2010). Continue reading “Raphaël Julliard Chromozone“
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
Oriol Vilanova, view of the exhibition Renoncer à te décrire
The artist as collector, Oriol Vilanova is a collector of postcards, this touristy and obsolete medium of communication that contains within itself traces of individual and collective memory. Images d’Epinal, pictures of monuments, of iconic and historical places, printed on a simple card, thus offering an idealised vision of the world, filled with nostalgia, and unchanging subjects, yet they testify of a time hopelessly lost. Oriol Vilanova often works with notions of individual and collective memory, of lost time, of the immortality of the iconic and heroic figure, of monuments and stereotypes re-enacting through writing, performance or installation an extensive visual documentation—films, publications, printed matter, postcards—and thus creating a collision and a temporal coming and going between past, present and future. Continue reading “Oriol Vilanova Renoncer à te décrire“
Centre d’édition contemporaine at artgenève international art fair
FILMS – CORRIDOR Valentin Carron, Philippe Decrauzat, David Hominal, David Maljkovic, Fabian Marti, Adrien Missika, Jonathan Monk, Laurie Vannaz, Oriol Vilanova
During the preview, january 29th, 2014: Izet Sheshivari, Poster Stories Performance with typewriter and posters
8 – 10 november, 2013
Preview & opening: November 7th
The CEC’s stand
w/Monica Bonvicini, Gerard Byrne, Philippe Decrauzat, Trisha Donnelly, Sylvie Fleury, David Hominal, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jakob Kolding, Erik van Lieshout, Fabian Marti, Jonathan Monk, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance
Oval – Lingotto Fiere
Art Editions, Stand AE1
www.artissima.it
An installation of four silkscreen prints and a sound piece, as well as a new publication, Through the Windows.
David Hominal manipulates images that often come from his personal archive, from the press or more largely images with historical or political references. He proceeds by free associations that mix flashbacks that are as much linked to current events as to intense personal experiences or to his literary and cinematographic keenness. He makes freely figurative or abstract painting. The subjects are treated in a graphical manner, in a rapid and immediate style that borrows more from photography, advertisement and the press than from painting itself. Continue reading “David Hominal Through The Windows“
JM: « For a little book that I just made with Galerie Yvon Lambert, The Making of Ten Posters, Ten Languages, Ten Colours, Ten Words, Ten Euros, we asked the printers if they would photograph their process. Actually, it started with a poster project that we had printed in Riga. Without us asking anything, the printers sent us photographs of the posters coming out of the press and of the printers holding them up. Upon seeing these pictures, we thought it would be perfect to make a book out of them. It’s really simple, basically to just show how the printers made the posters. But then we decided to ask the printers of the book, in Montreuil, to take pictures. We sent them a Polaroid camera and they agreed to document their whole process of making the book.» Continue reading “Jonathan Monk Egg“
Alexandre Bianchini, Gerard Byrne, Jeremy Deller & Karl Holmqvist, Andreas Dobler, Vidya Gastaldon & Jean-Michel Wicker, Fabrice Gygi, Klat, Jakob Kolding, Elke Krystufek, Claude Lévêque, Fabian Marti, M/M
w/ Pierre Bismuth, Monica Bonvicini, Philippe Decrauzat, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jakob Kolding, Erik van Lieshout, Christophe Rey, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance
From September 28 to 30, 2012
Preview: September 27
View of the CEC’s stand
With Monica Bonvicini, Philippe Decrauzat, Trisha Donnelly, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jakob Kolding, Elke Krystufek, Erik van Lieshout, Oscar Tuazon, Jeffrey Vallance
MoMA PS1, New York
organized by Printed Matter Inc.
Exhibition from June 22 until October 27, 2012 Opening on Thursday, June 21, 2012, from 6pm
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon, view of the exhibition
Oscar Tuazon or the liberating potential of construction
The work of Oscar Tuazon seems to be a natural extension of childhood, as obvious as building a wooden hut or exploring the forest. Tuazon never goes into architecture, he always stays below construction rules, safeguarding the freedom of building, by instinct, for the pleasure of taking possession of a place that would become for a while his living space, his home. Building as an extension of one’s self, of one’s body and movements. The gesture and the process of assembling are part of his pieces that must be understood as forms of appropriation, of experimentation, of « real-life » experiences. In an interview published in his catalogue I can’t see, Tuazon explains: « I want to make something with its own life, its own needs, a living thing. »Continue reading “Oscar Tuazon”
1 concert
6 evenings about contemporary editions
1 critical presentation of films
1 evolutive exhibition
An idea of Véronique Bacchetta, Donatella Bernardi, Boutheyna Bouslama, Noémie Étienne and Petra Krausz. A collaboration between Centre d’édition contemporaine and Eternal Tour
With Bertrand Bacqué, Daphné Bengoa, Donatella Bernardi, Laurence Bonvin, Jacques Borel, Thomas Boutoux, Rudy Decelière, Stéphane Degoutin, Noémie Etienne, Valeria Graziano, Tamar Halperin, Beat Lippert, Morad Montazami, Enrico Natale, Romolo Ottaviani, Marc Ruchmann, Denis Schuler et Frank Williams. Continue reading “Salon des Dames“
From April 25 until April 29, 2012
Opening on April 24, from 6pm
View of the CEC’s stand at artgenève
With Pierre Bismuth, Philippe Decrauzat, Aaron Flint Jamison, Erik van Lieshout, Fabian Marti, Oscar Tuazon, Benjamin Valenza, Jeffrey Vallance, Heimo Zobernig
stand A31, halle 2, Palexpo, Geneva
Exhibition from March 30 until May 5, 2012 Opening on Thursday, March 29, 2012, from 6 pm Performance on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 8 pm, Chapelle de Saint-Léger, 20 rue Saint-Léger, 1204 Geneva
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Jeffrey Vallance, view of the exhibition The Vallance Bible
Coming from the counterculture, Jeffrey Vallance (born in 1955, lives and works in Reseda/Los Angeles)is a Californian artist who revisits religious rituals, folklore and fetishist practices. While he slips in turn into the clothes of an ambassador, an anthropologist, an explorer, a writer, a professor or an investigator in paranormal phenomena, Vallance remains a compulsive collector whose stock-in-trade is nourished by personal and collective mythologies. Influenced by his forebear Emil Knudsen (1872–1956), famous Norwegian medium, he strongly believes in the part inspiration plays in his work, often perceived as a conversation with the hereafter. He thus turns his everyday life into an enchanted world, open to acts of faith, mysteries and revelations.
Oscar Tuazon, Fabian Marti and editions of Gerard Byrne, Philippe Decrauzat, Andreas Dobler, Aaron Flint Jamison, Adrien Missika, Gianni Motti Continue reading “Nouvelles éditions“
Opening on Thursday, January 12, 2012, from 6 to 8 pm
Oscar Tuazon talks to Giovanni Carmine, at 6.30 pm
Reading by American poet Cedar Sigo, at 7.15 pm
Exhibition from January 13 to February 18, 2012
Oscar Tuazon, Working Drawing
Book published by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva
c/o Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
Oscar Tuazon, Working Drawing
Book, reproduction of 210 drawings and a text by Oscar Tuazon, 19 x 23 cm, 256 pages, black photocopy, on Condat matt Périgord, cover in clear glass, covered in linen cloth, Texlibris GTI, colour: steel 564, square spine, sewn and glued, wrapped in a sheet of ribbed Pop’Set Perle, edition of 130, numbered and signed on the colophon inserted at the end of the book. Original drawings are included in the first 20 copies, starting from page 229. In addition, 20 A.P. signed and numbered from I to XX, have been printed. Binding and assemblage are the work of the atelier Philippe Martial, Paris. Designed by Pierre-François Letué, Paris, for the artist. Printed by Tracts, Paris.
This book is published by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, January 2012.
Book Launch of Working Drawing
On the occasion of Oscar Tuazon’s exhibition, Manual Labor
at the Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich.
From December 9, 2011 to february 11, 2012 Opening on December 8, 2011
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison, view of the exhibition
Aaron Flint Jamison is an artist particularly engaged in the field of edition. His artistic work comes as a wide range of reflections on the book and the object. He can be printer, typographer, editor and of course artist at the same time. He often works by assemblage and combinations: a piece of furniture, a poster or a publication which all push the link between representation, production, functionality, presentation and distribution to the edges of its simplicity, its obviousness and its impact. Each object merges technical and aesthetic potential and conceptual accuracy. Aaron Flint Jamison is between the artist and the technician, between the craftsman and the inventor. Continue reading “Aaron Flint Jamison”
Philippe Decrauzat, Trois films photographiés – A Change of Speed, a Change of Style, a Change of Scene – After Birds – Screen O Scope
Discussion around the book with Philippe Decrauzat and Véronique Bacchetta, director of the CEC
and presentation of a selection of editions of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, with the artists’ books of Sigurdur Arni Sigurdsson, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elke Krystufek, Monica Bonvicini, Jakob Kolding, Roman Ondák, Mads Ranch Kornum, Céline Duval, Katie Holten, Josef Strau, Christophe Rey, Erik van Lieshout; the catalogues Marcel Broodthaers, l’oeuvre graphique, essais; L’Effet papillon 1989-2007; Sgrafo vs Fat Lava and the multiples of François Curlet and of Pierre Bismuth Continue reading “Philippe Decrauzat Book Launch c/o Motto Zürich”
From October 8 until October 23, 2011
Opening on October 7, 2011, from 6pm
View of the exhibition Abstractions sentimentales et quelques éditions
With Gerard Byrne (IE), Raphaël Julliard (CH), Jakob Kolding (DK), Fabian Marti (CH), Adrien Missika (FR), Florian Pumhösl (A), Benjamin Valenza (FR), Susanne M. Winterling (DE).
Presented by Véronique Bacchetta and the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva
At the Cneai de Paris, 20 rue Louise Weiss, 75013 Paris
Project realized for the « carte blanche » given by CNEAI DE PARIS – 2011 Continue reading “Abstractions sentimentales et quelques éditions, Cneai, Paris”
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Philippe Decrauzat, view of the exhibition NYSTAGMUS
Like the spectator of a 3D cinema, Philippe Decrauzat’s work slides with mastery from one dimension to another. With wallpaintings and floorpaintings, shaped canvases, installations and light displays, we sway between scientific rigour and the vibrant effect of the red-blue spectacles. Whilst encompassing the legacy of abstraction as in Contructivism and Suprematism, in Op Art and its games of illusion as well as in Minimalism, his work shows a much wider interest for the origins of abstraction. Continue reading “Philippe Decrauzat NYSTAGMUS“
Gerard Byrne’s work is structured around documents – advertisements, daily papers, specialized magazines – dating from after the Second World War, generally from the 1960s and 1970s. After researching archives, Byrne uses these often fragmented and forgotten documents, transforms them and gives them a second life. The new images and settings that emerge from the joined processes of critical deconstruction and reconstruction, often dramatized, examine the codes of artistic or media images and those of representation. Continue reading “Gerard Byrne For example; a sketch of Five Elevations, 1971-72“
Book, French, bound, 105 x 165 mm, 64 pages, 22 colour pictures. Summary : Nicolas Trembley (ed.), Madeleine de Proust et Fat Lava (introduction); text by Horst Makus, Formes, couleurs et décors. Un survol; Interview of Ronan Bouroullec by Nicolas Trembley. Graphic design : Gavillet & Rust / Eigenheer, Geneva. Publisher : JRP|Ringier (Hapax collection), Zurich, 2011. ISBN 978-3-03764-163-7.
Something Less, Something More – DIY
Triple groove corrugated cardboard plate with seven pre-cut discs, 37 x 50 cm, a metal stick and instructions for use, offset, black and one colour, front and back, French/English, 74 x 50 cm, on Keaykolour nature quartz mat 150g/m2 paper, folded in two, all elements in a coloured plastic envelope (green, blue, yellow or clear) closed by a folded cardboard as colophon, digital print, one colour, 180 copies, edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2009.
From November 5, 2010, until February 5, 2011 Opening on November 4, 2010, from 6pm
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
View of the exhibition Sgrafo vs Fat Lava
Céramiques et porcelaines Made in West Germany, 1960-1980 With a sound piece by Seth Price
For the beginning of the month of November 2010 with the exhibition of a collection of historical ceramics from the 1960s – 1980s, we will be crossing from the field of art into the field of the object, nevertheless not fully abandoning the first one to the second. Almost a hundred pieces covering different styles and production processes will let us discover through a utilitarian and decorative object the different aesthetic variations of a prolific and stylistically free period, when common taste allowed itself to be kitsch and delirious. An era before the supremacy of design that is going to format most of our daily objects. The exhibition, entitled « Sgrafo vs Fat Lava, Ceramics and Porcelains Made in West Germany, 1960-1980 », is accompanied by a little book published for the occasion by JRP/Ringier (Zurich) in its « Hapax » series : Sgrafo vs Fat Lava.Continue reading “Sgrafo vs Fat Lava Céramiques et porcelaines Made in West Germany, 1960-1980″
"Encadrées", Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2010″ width=”1200″ height=”783″> View of the exhibition “Encadrées”
with Olivier Mosset, Gianni Motti, Florian Pumhösl, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Christophe Rey and Susanne M. Winterling.
Susanne M. Winterling, Dynamique de réflexion (2010)
Florian Pumhösl, Etudes abstraites (2004)
Jean Michel Othoniel, La Grande Lèvre (1991)
Gianni Motti, Sans titre (2006)
Olivier Mosset, Sans titre (1994)
Christophe Rey, Washington (2005)
April 23 – June 26, 2010
Opening on April 22, 2010, 6pm
Susanne M. Winterling, view of the exhibition They Call Each Other Horses
Susanne M. Winterling likes revisiting different figures of Art History, architects or intellectuals of the 20th century, mostly from its beginning. She admires and is inspired by the work of artists such as Berenice Abbott, Eileen Gray, Edward Krasinski, Le Corbusier or Annemarie Schwarzenbach, artistic fiction-figures from another world, a world that witnessed the birth of modernity.
As Mark Prince states in his Frieze article [n° 126, October 2009, …of Mice and Blood, (for E.K.), review of the Berlin exhibition at the gallery Lüttgenmeijer, where Susanne M. Winterling pays tribute to the Polish artist Edward Krasinski (1925-2004) with a display of objects and an environment inspired by a series of photographies taken in his atelier, preserved in its last state by the Warsaw Foksal Gallery (that Edward Krasinski cofounded in 1966)] : « Where the installation is more than the sum of its allusions, it manages to translate the irreducible particularities of another artist’s life and work into Winterling’s own language, like a dreamy adolescent who absorbs the image of a pop star into the private universe of her bedroom. »Continue reading “Susanne M. Winterling They Called Each Other Horses“
Sans titre
15 lithographs, black, on BFK Rives 300gm2 paper, 80 x 65 cm, edition of 4 plus 1 A.P. and 1 H.C., numbered, dated and signed.
Heimo Zobernig, born in 1958 in Mauthen (Austria), lives and works in Vienna.
Exhibition at the gallery Parrotta Contemporary Art (Stuttgart, Germany)
From February 13 until March 27, 2010
Opening on February 12, 2010 at 7pm
Sans titre, 1996″ width=”755″ height=”1000″> Heimo Zobernig, Sans titre
In a momentary community, free and polyphonic, the gallery Parrotta Contemporary Art in Stuttgart presents a series of editions of the Centre d’édition contemporaine chosen by Véronique Bacchetta : Andreas Dobler, Elke Krystufek, Erik van Lieshout, Florian Pumhösl, Markus Schinwald, Benjamin Valenza, Emmett Williams, Heimo Zobernig. Continue reading “Fröhliche Gesellschaft, Parrotta Contemporary Art, Stuttgart”
Pierre Bismuth, François Curlet, Fabrice Gygi, Karl Holmqvist, Angela Marzullo, Mai-Thu Perret, Benjamin Valenza, Jeffrey Vallance et Erik van Lieshout Continue reading “Editions vs. objets“
