Life to Itself

Life Life to Itselfto ItselfGroup exhibition 13 June > 5 September 2021Opening: Saturday, June 12thOpening: Saturday, June 12th2.30 pm: opening and exhibition tour 4.30 pm: talk with Flora Katz and the artists

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Centre international d’art et du paysage - Île de Vassivière F - 87 120 Beaumont-du-Lac +33 (0)5 55 69 27 27 - www.ciapiledevassiviere.com

Isabelle AndriessenBianca Bondi

Dora BudorTiphaine CalmettesGrégory ChatonskyRochelle Goldberg

Laure Vigna

curator:Flora Katz

PRESS KIT

PRESS RELEASE

«« It is not always easy to think of the earth as a living being1, to perceive its movements, either very slow or too fast, or to understand its cycles with its often distant cause and effect relationships. Life to Itself seeks the vitality of matter, its fugitive rhythms, its mute transformations. Instead of presenting fixed works that are objects of the human gaze, we aim to find chain reactions.

Therefore the invited artists place materials such as artificial intelligence, a tree stump, kombucha, water, wicker, salt crystals, micro algae in resonance. Through narrative installations or abstract forms, the works are dynamic systems within a circuit of reactions. Gradually, the works detach themselves from their original state and change: a basin dug in a sofa crystallizes under the action of salt (Bianca Bondi), a skin forms on the surface of a dark container (Tiphaine Calmettes), liquid drips from a ceramic sculpture (Isabelle Andriessen), a film is modified by the life of a tree stump (Grégory Chatonsky), cyanobacteria proliferate (Laure Vigna). As the works are reactive, the idea is that they meet, join forces or parasitise one another. They can also interact with the building and the exterior. What matters is to allow the works to develop on their own, to almost abandon them, in order to allow possibilities to emerge. They will become visible for some time after the exhibition has begun.

Life to Itself is a group exhibition which transforms over time: the works produced specifically for the project are designed to react and change, in relation to the life of the site. Together they compose a sensitive, spectral organism that comes to life in rhythm with the island and its inhabitants.

11 The Earth as a Living Being is a hypothesis advanced by the scientist James Lovelock. James LOVELOCK, Gaïa: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979 (original edition). La terre est un être vivant, l’hypothèse Gaïa, Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1986 (French translation).

Life Life to Itselfto Itself

– FLORA KATZ, curator


PRESS RELEASE

From parasite to sentient artwork

The exhibition Life to Itself was planned before the Covid-19 pandemic. During our initial discussions in November 2019, we talked about the way in which the works would parasitise one another. Michel Serres’s book The Parasite (1980) was our starting point: the philosopher explains that the parasite is never invited to a place, but that it always manages to intrude and not necessarily by coming in through the front door. It is difficult to pin down because it constantly transforms itself, sometimes even reversing its role with that of its host. The parasite is not really a fixed entity, but rather a "being in relation". It forces us to think about things not as objects but as ever-changing sites, dependent on their interactions. Michel Serres gave a lot of thought as to how to approach climate change. One of the steps was to no longer think of things as fixed, but as fugitive and parasitical, in constant transformation.

Since the pandemic began the exhibition was postponed twice: it should have initially take place in summer 2020, then in March 2021. Over time, we have detached from the image of the parasite, perhaps too close to the present tense. Then the idea of a sentient artwork seemed interesting: because the artworks would react to each other, we could say that they were sentient. The works perceive humidity, the movement of other beings, variations of light. They can grow, degrade, form alliances, mutate. Instead of being a fixed set of works to look at, the exhibition could be considered as an assembly of sentient beings. It is then less about how to appreciate the work, to judge its visual qualities, than to ask oneself what it actually is and what it is becoming. To propose an artwork or an exhibition that is sentient is to give back aesthetic agency to the work itself, and to get away from the classic modality of a subject looking at an object. The sentient work of art no longer needs to be looked at, it simply develops in relation to its milieu, with or without us, humans.

To consider the exhibition or the artwork as sentient is a way of respond to the problem of the Anthropocene22: if climate change calls for human beings to shift their focus to better listen to the earth, then we need to find new ways of seeing. To no longer consider the Earth as a resource, but as a sensitive being in relation with other beings, and whose reactions are sometimes imperceptible but have important consequences. Moreover, a sentient artwork can be produced by its connections with other living beings: it has this ability to generate forms that have not been predicted by the artist who originally created it. In relation to its place and to other beings, it transforms, and opens up new possibilities that the action of time calls to light. »»

22 We entered the Anthropocene period during the eighteenth-century industrial revolution, after the Holocene period. It marks the moment when humans (Anthropos) became a geological force that influenced the future development of the earth. There are other terms, such as Capitalocene or Plantationocene, that cover the current period of ecological change and the adaptability of the earth, each one highlighting the specific problem which seems the most important.

BIANCA BONDI1 - 2 The Antechamber (Tundra Swan), site-specific installation, Busan Biennale (KR), 2020. Six tonnes of salt, bed with pillows and sheeting, saline pond, artificial vegetation, natural vegetation, coins, circular mirror, chest of drawers, glass swan, rusted arrows, copper amphores, linen, glass swan.3 The Sacred Spring and Necessary Reservoirs, site-specific installation, The 15th Lyon Biennale (FR), 2019. Mixed media (salt, salt water, copper, fully functional kitchen, electrical appliances...) Photos: courtesy of the artist and gallery Mor Charpentier. © Bianca Bondi. Rights reserved ADAGP.

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ISABELLE ANDRIESSEN1 Ivory Dampers, 2020. Ceramic, iron II sulphate, stainless steel. Photographer: Aad Hoogendoorn.2 Terminal Beach, installation, 2018 [detail]. Ceramic, aluminum, iron II sulphate, wood, epoxy clay, vitryl tubes,water cooler, compressed air, scent. Photographer: Gert Jan van Rooij.Photos: courtesy of the artist. Rights reserved.

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3DORA BUDOR1 The Forecast (New York Situation), open-air installation, Mutations, High Line Art, New York, 2017. Epoxy resin, dye, hydrochromic paint, stainless steel, automotive paint, weather, hardware, various screen-used silicone, plastic and latex special effect appliances from film productions. Dimensions: 33 x 62 x 88 inches.2 The Year without a Summer (Klug’s Field), 2019. Environment with 5 Terrazza DS-1025 seating elements, 4 ash dispersing machines with reactive electronic system, special effect ash, light scenario. Dimensions variable.Solo for 1973, 2019 (left wall). Brass, scenic aging. 244 x 122 x 2.5 cm.Solo for 1872, 2019 (back wall). Brass, scenic aging. 244 x 122 x 2.5 cm.Installation view I am Gong, Kunsthalle Basel (image from the end of the exhibition).Photos: courtesy of the artist. Rights reserved.


TIPHAINE CALMETTES 1 Untitled, site-specific installation, 2020. Raw earth and straw carved units, cement fountain systems, shaped ceramic alembic, laboratory glassware, demijohns, water from the Vassivière Lake, cement and raw earth oil lamps.2 - 3 Untitled, site-specific installation, 2020. Site-specific huge bowl, kombuche ‘mother culture’, suspended ceramic hanger. Photos: Par le chant grondant des vibrations autour, exhibition views, International Centre for Art and Landscape, Vassivière (FR). © Tiphaine Calmettes. Rights reserved ADAGP.

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GRÉGORY CHATONSKY 1 Ilots, 2021. Photograph. Variable dimensions. 2 Externes, 2021. Physical simulation and 3D printing. Parallel project to Internes (Prix MAIF for Sculpture, 2020). Photos: courtesy of the artist. Rights reserved.

ROCHELLE GOLDBERG 1 Digesting Gold, 2018 [detail]. Bronze, glass, water, celery root, lacquer gum, acrylic, dispersion paint, eco-plastic, carpet, 247 x 310 x 45 cm.2 Corpse Kitty: towards a friendly fatality, 2020 [detail]. Bronze, eyeshadow, 50 x 102 x 32 cm.3 Picnic, installation, 2020 [detail]. 12 glass bowls, sourdough bread and coins. Variable dimensions.Photos: courtesy of the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York. Rights reserved.

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LAURE VIGNA1 Incorporate, raw steel, bio-plastics (wheat starch), pigments, inks, sisal. 130 x 185 x 30 cm. 2 Shimmer, raw steel, bio-plastics (agar agar, carrageenan), pigments, inks, 225 x 70 x 53 cm.Exhibition views from group show Permafrost. Forms of Disaster (cur: Vincent Honoré), MO.CO Panacée, Montpellier (FR), 2020. Works co-produced by contemporary art centres Parc Saint-Léger and MO.CO, Montpellier Contemporain.Photos: courtesy of the artist. © Marc Domage.


PRESS VISUALS

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Isabelle Andriessen investigates ways to physically animate inanimate (synthetic) materials in order to provide them with their own metabolism, behavior and agency. Her sculptures are active characters inhabiting the liminal space between sculpture and performance. They become persistent and contagious; they refuse to stay fixed and yet they expand. Like eerie performers, composed of materials that act and evolve, the works moveseemingly beyond control, and often irreversibly.

In 2017-2018 Isabelle Andriessen was artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Besides she participated in the Arts & Science Honours Program of the KNAW Royal Dutch Academy of Science and Academy of Arts in 2016.

Recent exhibitions include MOMA, Warsaw (2020); the 15th Lyon Biennial, Lyon (2019); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2018); CAB Art Center, Brussels (2017). In 2021 Andriessen has a solo exhibition at Museum de Pont, Tilburg (NL) and CAN Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel (CH).

ARTISTS AND CURATOR

Isabelle ANDRIESSEN1986, Netherlands. Lives and works in Amsterdam.

BIANCA BONDI1986, Johannesburg, South Africa. Lives and works in the Île-de-France region, France.


Multifaceted, Bianca Bondi’s work combines technique and material experimentation. With a process based practice, her works are often designed for and completed within the spaces that house them. The materials that she uses are chosen specifically for their intrinsic qualities or their potential to change as time passes; their associations create strange new forms. Inspired by occult science, her working methods can perhaps be compared to a ritualistic practice or an instinctive alchemy. By encouraging potential interactions between the elements that make up the works, they become actors in a slow conceptual performance, on macro and microscopic levels simultaneously. The artist ties these organic encounters to actual settings or to the history of the place in question, and endorses an ecological approach by trying to bring us closer to the intangible.

Her works have been exhibited at TagTeam Studio (Bergen, Norway, 2017), MO.CO Panacée (Montpellier, FR, 2018), BOZAR (Brussels, 2019), Sferik (Tulum, Mexico, 2019), Het HEM (Amsterdam, NL, 2020), la Fondation Carmignac (Ile de Porquerolle, FR, 2021), and as part of the Biennales de Lyon 2019 and Busan 2020. She was a finalist for the Prix Le Meurice for Art 2018, the Prix Découverte des Amis du Palais de Tokyo 2018 and the Prix Aware in 2020. Upcoming exhibitions include the 2nd Thailand Biennale (2021) and Open Space #8, a solo project at La Fondation Louis Vuitton, (2021).

Bianca Bondi is represented by the Galerie Mor Charpentier, Paris.

ARTISTS AND CURATOR

DORA BUDOR1984, Croatia. Based in New York.

TIPHAINE CALMETTES1988, France. Lives and works in Paris.


Dora Budor’s work adapts and appropriates existing architecture and environments through sound, sculpture and installation. An interdependency of meaning, between the work and its host is constructed, wherein the characteristics of any given context are amplified or re-circuited. Image as a conduit of memory and meaning is produced in each scenario through the cinematic as it has come to be known not technically, but phenomenologically.

Budor has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Bregenz (2022), Progetto Space (2021), Kunsthalle Basel (2019), 80WSE (2018), and Swiss Institute (2015). Her work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including Whitney Museum of American Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Museum Fridericianum, Palais de Tokyo, Migros Museum, Schinkel Pavillon, Swiss Institute, Kunsthalle Biel, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, La Panacee Montpellier, Halle für Kunst und Medien Graz, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, MOCA Belgrade, K11 Art Museum, as well as in 9th Berlin Biennial, Vienna Biennale, Art Encounters 2017, 13th Baltic Triennial, 16th Istanbul Biennial, 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Geneva Sculpture Biennale 2020 and 58th October Salon | Belgrade Biennale 2021.

Budor was a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Prize in 2014 and Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2018. In 2019, she was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts. She regularly contributes to Mousse magazine and other publications.

Including concrete, earth, moss and lichen, but also marks left by plants and animals, Tiphaine Calmettes’s evolving works stimulate the narratives that form our relationships to the world. In the form of ‘edible enactments’, her objects and narratives come to life by reexperiencing sharing and companionship, through tasting and meeting.

A 2013 graduate from ENSA Bourges, Tiphaine Calmettes is the winner of the Prix Aware 2020. Amongst her recent exhibitions and performances are: Par le chant grondant des vibrations autour (CIAP Vassivière, FR, 2020); La vie des tables (Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, FR, 2020); Rituel.le.s (IAC, Villeurbanne, FR, 2020); Attiser le feu pour qu’il reprenne (Centre céramique contemporaine, La Borne, FR, 2020); Il y avait des odeurs qui marchaient (Centre d’Art Ygrec-ENSAPC, Aubervilliers, FR, 2020); La terre embrasse le sol (ENS, Lyon, 2019); We usedta leave deluxe issues of love potions/ * (One Gee in Fog, Geneva, 2019); Si tu as faim, mange ta main (Paris Art Lab, Paris, 2019); “Some of us” (Kunstwerk Carlshütte Büdelsdorf, Germany, 2019); Dans la basse lueur humide (Zoo Galerie, Nantes, FR, 2019); CookBook’19 (MO.CO Panacée, Montpellier, FR, 2019); Clair de lune à travers les hautes branches (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2019); Le pouvoir du dedans (La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, FR, 2018); Nous ne sommes pas le nombre que nous croyons être (Bétonsalon, Paris, 2018); Astragals (Phoinix Bratislava, Slovakia, 2017).

Since the middle of the 1990s and the creation of Incident.net, Grégory Chatonsky has worked on the internet and its intuitive character. From 2001 he began a long series of works on disorder, the aesthetic of ruins and extinction as a simultaneously artificial and natural phenomenon that is both imaginary and real. As time has gone on, he has turned towards a study of the ability of machines to produce results, virtually autonomously, that look like they’ve been man-made or that even improve on man-made.These different themes have come together thanks to the internet’s synthetic imagination.

He has taken part in exhibitions in France, in Canada and other countries, for example Second Earth at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2019), Je ressemblerai à ce que vous avez été at the Tanneries (Amilly, FR, 2019), France Electronique in Toulouse (2018), Land/Sea/Signal at Rua Red (Dublin, 2018), Imprimer le monde at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017), Capture: Submersion at Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2016), The post-photographic condition in Montreal (Mois de la Photo, 2015), Walkers: Hollywood afterlives in art at the Museum of the Moving Image (NY, 2015), Telofossils at the Contemporary Art Museum (Taipei, 2013). He was a guest teacher at Fresnoy, at l’UQAM, at Artec, and is an artist-researcher at the ENS Ulm and at Geneva University.

GRÉGORY CHATONSKY1971, Paris, France. CanadianFrench.

ROCHELLE GOLDBERG1984, Vancouver, Canada. Lives and works in New York and Berlin. .

The sculptures of Rochelle Goldberg are structured by the logic of intraction – a term for an unruly set of relations in which the boundary between one entity and another is continually undermined. Across Goldberg’s body of work, intraction operates in tandem on the levels of form and content.

Rochelle Goldberg earned her MFA from Bard College. Solo exhibitions include Gatekeepers (Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2020), Psychomania (Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, 2020), born in a beam of light (The Power Station, Dallas, 2019), Pétroleuse (Éclair, Berlin, 2018), Intralocutors (Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, 2017), The Plastic Thirsty (Sculpture Center, NY, 2016), No Where, Now Here (GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy, 2016). Her work has also been shown at MO.CO Panacée, Montpellier, FR (2020); Barunsfelder Family Collection, Cologne (2020); The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal (2020); Mother Culture, Berlin (2020); DOC, Paris (2019); Rockefeller Center, New York (2019); Croy Nielsen, Vienna, Austria (2018); Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris (2017); Okayama Art Summit, Japan (2016); Whitney Museum, New York (2016).

Rochelle Goldberg is represented by the Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York.

ARTISTS AND CURATORLife Life to Itselfto Itself

GRÉGORY CHATONSKY

ROCHELLE GOLDBERG

LAURE VIGNA1984, Saint-Rémy, Burgundy, France. Lives and works in Marseille and Brussels.

FLORA KATZ

Flora Katz © Alexandra Pace

In her sculptural practice, Laure Vigna interrogates states of transformation and intermediate forms. She is interested in the experience of matter as a means of rethinking production processes in an ethical and ecological relationship.

Laure Vigna graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2008) after an exchange at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada).

She has exhibited at: MO.CO Panacée, Montpellier (2020); Centre d’art du Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux (2018); DOC, Paris (2018); Πνεῦμα, Lisbon (2017); Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger (2017); Mon Chéri, Brussels (2017). She is laureate of the residency program Étant Donné by the French Institute, the FACE Foundation and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States (2019) for a project at the Yucca Valley Material Lab. She has participated in several independent alternative education programs and residencies such as the Centre d’art du Parc Saint Léger in Pougues-les-Eaux, France (2018); the Independent Study Program at the Rogaland Kunstsenter in Stavanger, Norway (2017); the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, USA (2017); 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, USA (2013); and the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart, Germany (2011). She has been supported on several occasions by the CNAP and the DRAC Bourgogne Franche-Comté and Île-de-France. In 2015, she was the recipient of a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Flora Katz is a curator, a PHD candidate at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and an art critic.

She is interested in the way art interacts with forms of life. She writes a thesis on the artist Pierre Huyghe and is the adjunct curator for his exhibition at the Luma-Arles Foundation (summer 2021).

She recently published : An Aesthetic of the Possible (Cura 35, 2020), Les formes à elles-mêmes (L’écho du réel, Mimesis, 2021), Everything in Me that Feels, Thinks (Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Skira, 2020), Penser l’extinction avec Pierre Huyghe (Critique, Les éditions de Minuit, 2019).

Her exhibitions include: Nothing Belongs to Us: To Offer (Fondation Ricard, 2017), Editathon Art+Feminisms (Lafayette Anticipations, 2015-2017), Odradek (Instants Chavirés, 2014). She has also worked with the Miguel Abreu Gallery (New York), and Bétonsalon (Paris).

ARTISTS AND CURATORLife Life to Itselfto Itself

AN AESTHETIC OF THE POSSIBLE, FLORA KATZ, CURA, N°35 – THE CHANGING WORLD, 2021.

Online version: https://curamagazine.com/

digital/an-aesthetic-of-the-possible/

A frozen kitchen in which salt crystals invade the objects (Bianca Bondi); white masses that sweat (Isabelle Andries-sen); hanging carbonized forms that seep onto the floor (Agata Ingarden): recently, one increasingly finds repre-sentations of spaces that are deserted, as if left to them-selves, their life continuing in silence. If they echo fears of mass extinction, they are also representations of the possible. In a contracting world, resistance plays out in corners that have to be pressed in. Finding the potentialities of the future in the past and present has always been a strong aspi-ration. But today, the task is becoming complicated: which representations would keep the promises of a consciousness of the Anthropocene? How can one decenter human beings, give them a less hegemonic place, and give voice to other beings that are more hybrid, perhaps more precarious? In observing the work of Bianca Bondi, Isabelle Andriessen, Dora Budor, Grégory Chaton-sky, Rochelle Goldberg, Ian Cheng, Pierre Huyghe, Agata Ingarden, Laure Vigna and oth-ers, the lines of force become apparent: the work must be able to generate possibilities.

SYMBIOSIS An aesthetic of the possible first suggests a dynamic work. Unlike the static object, the work is temporal, and has a vitality that can dwell below that of an organism. In the project Perfect Skin XI (2020), Grégory Chatonsky shows can-cerous cell mutations created by artificial intelligence. In Ivory Dampers (2019) by Isabelle Andriessen, iron sulphate is absorbed and transformed by ceramics. The material is no longer a fixed mass that the human hand changes at lei-sure, but an infinitely complex whole that the artist learns to know in order to negotiate its changes. Introducing vitality into the work has immediate conse-quences: it enters into symbi-osis with its environment. In No Where, Now Here (2016), the chia seeds that form the bed of Rochelle Goldberg’s sculptures attract insects that become an integral part of the work. With The Sacred Spring and Necessary Reservoirs (2019) by Bianca Bondi, tem-perature is a crucial element of the development of the work. One also thinks of Pierre Huyghe’s microcosms (After ALife Ahead, Untilled), in which

rain, bees and ants are part of a chain of reactions assembled by the artist.

FEEDBACK

The invisibilized museum pop-ulation enters into the work: everything that had been sep-arated from it by the hermetic white walls returns, and forms a cycle with it. The feedback loop, a temporal phenomenon that explains global warming, becomes an artistic motif. Thought that is modern, linear (time is chronological) and sep-aratist (distinction of humans from nonhumans) has purged the world of chain reactions in which dispersed elements were linked by the same phenome-non. But the world is populated by hybrids: the coronavirus is provoking reactions in ecology, culture, politics, medicine, edu-cation, etc. It is analyzed as a total fact that disciplines trans-late into their language. It is a singular thing that circulates and is incarnated in different forms. Likewise, Dora Budor shows us that the small vol-canic eruptions of the series Origin (2019) are linked to con-struction works a few meters from the exhibition site. With the motif of the color pink in Untilled (2011-2012), Pierre

Huyghe shows that a dog, a bench, water, and a flower could be linked by one same phenomenon. To get out of modern impasses, we have no choice but to conceive of the world as chains of translation.1 The work is no longer alone.

THE WORK BY ITSELF

It is not by chance that a ghostly atmosphere emanates from the pieces: in the process of showing what had been pushed away, low-intensity life forms appear. The works sweat, change imperceptibly. Nicolas Bourriaud and Ruba Katrib will speak of molecular sculpture:2 the life of cells and the development of crystals are movements that the artist endeavors to present. In this muted, nearly indiscernible life, movements abound in possibilities. More precisely, they oscillate between determination and contingency. Like relations between the living, the works show aspects of the possible to different degrees, ranging from the highest (contingency) to the lowest (determination). For example, if the temperature lowers in the room, Laure Vig-na’s piece Impossible Also to Resist an Extraordinary Impulse

150 151AN AESTHETIC OF THE POSSIBLE FLORA KATZTEXT BY

https://curamagazine.com/digital/an-aesthetic-of-the-possible/


A frozen kitchen in which salt crystals invade the objects (Bianca Bondi); white masses that sweat (Isabelle Andries-sen); hanging carbonized forms that seep onto the floor (Agata Ingarden): recently, one increasingly finds repre-sentations of spaces that are deserted, as if left to them-selves, their life continuing in silence. If they echo fears of mass extinction, they are also representations of the possible. In a contracting world, resistance plays out in corners that have to be pressed in. Finding the potentialities of the future in the past and present has always been a strong aspi-ration. But today, the task is becoming complicated: which representations would keep the promises of a consciousness of the Anthropocene? How can one decenter human beings, give them a less hegemonic place, and give voice to other beings that are more hybrid, perhaps more precarious? In observing the work of Bianca Bondi, Isabelle Andriessen, Dora Budor, Grégory Chaton-sky, Rochelle Goldberg, Ian Cheng, Pierre Huyghe, Agata Ingarden, Laure Vigna and oth-ers, the lines of force become apparent: the work must be able to generate possibilities.

SYMBIOSIS An aesthetic of the possible first suggests a dynamic work. Unlike the static object, the work is temporal, and has a vitality that can dwell below that of an organism. In the project Perfect Skin XI (2020), Grégory Chatonsky shows can-cerous cell mutations created by artificial intelligence. In Ivory Dampers (2019) by Isabelle Andriessen, iron sulphate is absorbed and transformed by ceramics. The material is no longer a fixed mass that the human hand changes at lei-sure, but an infinitely complex whole that the artist learns to know in order to negotiate its changes. Introducing vitality into the work has immediate conse-quences: it enters into symbi-osis with its environment. In No Where, Now Here (2016), the chia seeds that form the bed of Rochelle Goldberg’s sculptures attract insects that become an integral part of the work. With The Sacred Spring and Necessary Reservoirs (2019) by Bianca Bondi, tem-perature is a crucial element of the development of the work. One also thinks of Pierre Huyghe’s microcosms (After ALife Ahead, Untilled), in which

rain, bees and ants are part of a chain of reactions assembled by the artist.

FEEDBACK

The invisibilized museum pop-ulation enters into the work: everything that had been sep-arated from it by the hermetic white walls returns, and forms a cycle with it. The feedback loop, a temporal phenomenon that explains global warming, becomes an artistic motif. Thought that is modern, linear (time is chronological) and sep-aratist (distinction of humans from nonhumans) has purged the world of chain reactions in which dispersed elements were linked by the same phenome-non. But the world is populated by hybrids: the coronavirus is provoking reactions in ecology, culture, politics, medicine, edu-cation, etc. It is analyzed as a total fact that disciplines trans-late into their language. It is a singular thing that circulates and is incarnated in different forms. Likewise, Dora Budor shows us that the small vol-canic eruptions of the series Origin (2019) are linked to con-struction works a few meters from the exhibition site. With the motif of the color pink in Untilled (2011-2012), Pierre

Huyghe shows that a dog, a bench, water, and a flower could be linked by one same phenomenon. To get out of modern impasses, we have no choice but to conceive of the world as chains of translation.1 The work is no longer alone.

THE WORK BY ITSELF

It is not by chance that a ghostly atmosphere emanates from the pieces: in the process of showing what had been pushed away, low-intensity life forms appear. The works sweat, change imperceptibly. Nicolas Bourriaud and Ruba Katrib will speak of molecular sculpture:2 the life of cells and the development of crystals are movements that the artist endeavors to present. In this muted, nearly indiscernible life, movements abound in possibilities. More precisely, they oscillate between determination and contingency. Like relations between the living, the works show aspects of the possible to different degrees, ranging from the highest (contingency) to the lowest (determination). For example, if the temperature lowers in the room, Laure Vig-na’s piece Impossible Also to Resist an Extraordinary Impulse


to Go Away on All Sides (2018) is forced to condense. The simulation Emissary in the Squat of Gods (2015) by Ian Cheng starts with a contin-gent event, the eruption of a volcano, so that hundreds of planned elements develop. Everything hinges on the preparation of conditions so that the elements then test their potential. The more elements there are in the chain, the more possible results. The artist is therefore decentered from a system that he or she imple-ments, and that then self-gen-erates. Mallarmé’s3 romantic dreams of self-generation have almost been attained. For that, a work had to be conceived as a set of relations instead of an accumulation of masses or mechanical links. Leaving the work by itself, decentering oneself from it, means observ-ing how possibles get created. This is why the speculative tendencies of some contempo-rary philosophies (speculative realism, object-oriented philos-ophy) exerted such a strong attraction on the art field a decade ago: to nonhumans they promised potentialities that had long been pushed away.

HISTORIES: MATERIALISMS, SYSTEMS

The history of modern art has seen similar forms come into being: formlessness, mat-terism and Land Art offered works in which the dynamism of the material was foremost. Contingent (1969) by Eva Hesse showed pieces of latex and muslin that developed in a contingent way. Entropy was a process of disorder sought by Robert Smithson, finding its most iconic expression in Spiral Jetty (1970). In the catalogue L’informe: mode d’emploi,4 Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss named this tendency base materialism, borrowing George Bataille’s term. Going against idealism, it designates a matter never absorbed by the idea or form, without any subject, structure or history.5 But for Krauss and Bois, formlessness is primarily understood within a postmod-ern dynamic in which the aim is to represent the end of the great narratives, the lack of meaning, and the abyssal void in which the human being has plunged. Mirroring humans, the analysis was always anthropocentric. In the 1970s, the experi-ments of E.A.T.,6 accompanied

by system aesthetics,7 found less anthropocentric repre-sentations that gave room to light, wind, vibrations (Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, Rob-ert Rauschenberg, John Cage) and other components, where the work is considered within a set of relations with the envi-ronment. It was the time of cybernetics, of a non-organic life of things that subsequently inspired the complex systems of Pierre Huyghe and the arti-ficial simulations of Grégory Chatonsky.

GENERATING POSSIBILITIES

An aesthetic of the possible moves the work away from reception problems in order to concentrate on its movements. It will not be so much a mat-ter of understanding in what sense the piece is beautiful, sublime or a vehicle of ideas, but rather how it is generative of forms. How did the skin change in Perfect Skin XI? How did the colors of Ivory Dampers develop? Seeing the work as a chain of relations echoes the anthro-pologies of relation developed by Philippe Descola and Anna Tsing, the hybrid philosophies of Donna Haraway, Baptiste Morizot and Emanuele Coccia,

the metaphysics of Tristan Garcia: each approach moves away from a naturalist vision (nature is the unified field of the nonhuman, and the human is an exception) and never considers an entity alone, but always within a field of relations, an environment that retroacts. Getting away from “the objectivization of the world and of others”8 proceeds by means of representations that are less stable and unified, more precarious. The works that generate possible pop-ulate a low-intensity world. But one must not be mistaken about it, mass extinction does not concern all life on Earth, just some of the living beings. As James Lovelock explains in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth,9 life is a force that very few speculative scenarios can get the better of. The forms of the possible can help us listen to it.

1. Translation is a key methodological work of philosopher Bruno Latour. See Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, essai d’anthropologie symétrique (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 1991).2. Ruba Katrib, “Molecular Sculpture,” Art in America, 22 August 2017 [https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/molecular-sculpture-63289] and Nicolas Bourriaud (ed.), Crash Test, la révolution moléculaire (Montpellier: La Panacée, 2018).3. Jacques Scherer, “Le Livre” de Mallarmé. Premières recherches sur des documents inédits (Paris: Gallimard, 1957).4. Yve-Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss, L’informe: mode d’emploi (Paris: Centre Georges Pom-pidou, 1996). 5. With other artists like Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg, Alberto Burri. 6. Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) founded by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman.7. Jack Burnham, “Systems Esthetics,” Artforum, September 1968, pp. 30-35.8. Philippe Descola, Par-delà nature et culture (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), p. 13.9. James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).






















AROUND THE EXHIBITIONLife Life to Itselfto Itself

Wednesday, 14, 21 and 28 July – 10 am (duration: 1h-1h30 exhibition tour included) ROLL ME IF YOU CAN The children dive into the living matter of the exhibition with a magnifying glass during and explore the clay in motion.

Wednesday, 28 July – 10 am (duration: 2h30 exhibition tour included) NATURE AND WEAVINGA baskery initiation tour after an exhibition tour by Hélène JOLY, a basket maker who collaborated in the work of Laure VIGNA in the exhibition. A direct and sensitive contact with the plant to transform the wicker into basketry, in the form of a windmill to be suspended.

Monday, 19 - Tuesday, 20 - Monday, 26 - Tuesday, 27 July – 10 am (duration: 1h-1h30 guided walking tour included) FOLD ME IF YOU CAN Guided walk in the Sculptures Wood followed by a co-creation workshop of an aerial sculpture in the forest.

Thursday, 15 - 22 and 29 July – 10 am (duration: 1h-1h30 building guided tour included). Option for adult visitors to use the booklet with a children group independently (free date and time slot during exhibition-opening hours). AT THE DISCOVERY OF THE ART CENTRE ARCHITECTUREDiscovery of Aldo Rossi’s architecture with a member of the Art Centre, and creativity awakening with an illustrated booklet and a multi coloured pencil.

Thursday, 29 July – 10 am (duration: 2h building guided tour included) YOUNG ARCHITECTSWhat is architecture and how do we build? Introductory workshop about construction techniques by a guide from a local heritage association, and an introduction to Aldo Rossi’s architecture by a member of the Art Centre team (creativity awakening with an illustrated booklet and a multi coloured pencil). In partnership with the Pays d’art et d’histoire Montset Barrages. Booking: + 33 5 55 69 57 60 (Pays d’art et d’histoire)

Family activities

Booking: +33 5 55 69 27 27

Exhibition guided tour and artistic experimentparent(s) + child(ren) from 3 years old.5€/person

Exhibition guided tour and baskery initiation workshopparent(s) + child(ren) from 10 years old (8 people max.)10€/person

Exhibition guided tour and artistic experiment in the Sculptures Woodparent(s) + child(ren) from 3 years old.5€/person

Exhibition guided tour and activity booklet parent(s) + child(ren) from 8 years old4€/child5€/adult

Building tour and artistic experiment parent(s) + child(ren) aged 6-12 years old6€/person


On-demand date (duration: 1h) EXHIBITION GUIDED TOUR A guided tour of the exhibition followed by an experimental workshop exploring living and sculpted materials and discussions about the relationship between humankind and nature.

On-demand date (duration: 1h-2h) LET’S TAKE A WALK IN THE WOOD!Commented walk in the Sculptures Wood. Possibility of adding an off track guided tour in Eymoutiers (87) to discover Platform, one of the9 landscape works of the trail Vassivière Utopia.

From 19 April to 30 September SAILING IN THE SCULPTURES WOOD Canoe trail around Vassivière Island and discovery of selected artworks in the Sculptures Wood with a member of the Art Centre team and an entertainer of the Canoë Kayak Eymoutiers Club. Option for bus-boats for 15 children or 9 adults.

On-demand date TAILOR-MADE WELCOMEOn-demand stays, tours, workshops for groups, young audiences or adults all year! Information: +33 5 55 69 27 27 – [email protected]

Booking: +33 5 55 69 27 27

For groups (> 10 people)

Events

Journey into the exhibitionall audiences3€/person

Guided walk in the Sculptures Wood all audiences3€/person

Commented canoe trip in the Sculptures Wood all audiences18€/person

Show15€ full fee12€ reduced feeTicket offers a reduced fee for the exhibition at the Art Centre (3€)

Sunday, 22 August – 9 pm « LE RETOUR DES ROIS D’IRANLE JOUR OÙ J’AI FÊTÉ MES 40 ANS À TÉHÉRAN »Olivier VillanoveAn invitation to discover today’s Iran through yesterday’s Persia which mixes life story and epic poetry. A show as part of the Festival Paroles de conteurs, in partnership with Contes en Creuse. Booking: online tickets on www.paroles-conteurs.org [email protected] - +33 6 89 94 85 10

Sonder l’île, radio programme The art centre is also exhibiting on the radio! For each exhibition you can find three parts: the mix, a selection of music relating to the themes of the exhibition, put together by the art centre team and the artist, the sound bites, recorded during the exhibition, the selection of books by the artist, which can be found in the art centre bookshop.

In partnership with Radio Vassivière. Podcasts: www.ciapiledevassiviere.com and www.radiovassiviere.com


Practicalinformation

Next exhibition

In the Castle, research and creative residencies

Friends of the InternationalCentre for Art and LandscapeAssociation

Following the Art Centre News!

New Patrons Actions

Exhibition and bookshopIN JULY - AUGUSTEvery day: 11 am - 1 pm and 2 pm - 6 pm FROM SEPTEMBER TO JUNEWeekends and public holidays: 11 am - 1 pm and 2 pm - 6 pm / From Tuesday to Friday: 2 pm - 6 pm

Full fee: 5€ / reduced fee: 3€

Sculptures Wood and off track trail Vassivière Utopia More than 70 outside and permanent works to discover on Vassivière Island and in 9 villages around the Lake. Free, explanatory note placed near eachwork. More information: www.ciapiledevassiviere.com

La sagesse des lianes19 Sept. > 28 Nov. 2021 (opening: 18 September)Group exhibition, first segment of the project Cosmo-poétique du refuge (curator: Dénètem Touam Bona, philosopher).

Residence ‘Art and Night Sky’19 July > 20 September 20212 creators will be welcomed for a first period of creative, research and production residence, in partnership with the Syndicat mixte d’aménagement et de gestion du PNR de Millevaches en Limousin.

Change the World with Art!The Art Centre is an accredited mediator for the New Patrons Action for the Fondation de France. The New Patrons Action is a unique encounter between you and a contemporary artist! He would invent for you an original form to answer the problematic you have raised. Do you have an idea of order? An art desire?Contact the Art Centre!+33 5 55 69 27 27 – [email protected]

Whether you live in Limousin, in another region or abroad, become an actor or actress in the history of the Art Centre by joining the Association of Friends of the International Centre for Art and Landscape, and support the Art Centre through it (meetings/conferences, workshop visits, cultural partnerships, etc.). Information and membership form: www.ciapiledevassiviere.com / practical information / Friends of the International Centre for Art and Landscape Association

Don’t miss our news: subscribe our newsletter!Register online at www.ciapiledevassiviere.com

THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR ART AND LANDSCAPE

The International Centre for Art and Landscape receives the backing of the Ministry of Culture/Nouvelle-Aquitaine Région Cultural Affairs Office and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Région.

The Art Centre is an accredited mediator for the NewPatrons Action for the Fondation de France.

The Centre is a member of the national networks d.c.a, Arts en résidence, as well as the regional network Astre.

The Art Centre was built in 1991by the architects Aldo Rossi

and Xavier Fabre. The building is aRemarkable Contemporary Architecture.

With the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Henry Moore Foundation and Miguel Abreu Gallery.

The Laure Vigna’s project Symbioses or the Green Bead Bores Its Way up a Spiral Staircase Through the Water to Burst Against the Sheet of Glass was selected by the patronage commission of the

Fondation des Artistes, which supported it.

Press contactClaire Graeffly

[email protected]+33 (0)5 55 69 27 27Life Life

to Itselfto Itselfa group exhibition in the context of artistic programme 2020 by Marianne Lanavère, director of the International Centre for Art and Landscape from Mars 2012 to April 2021.

Documents

Life to Itself