19 November 2022 - 18 March 2023
An exhibition with Anna and Bernhard Blume,
Ulla von Brandenburg, Thorsten Brinkmann, Robert Cumming, Elspeth
Diederix, Alina Maria Frieske, Barbara Iweins, Baptiste Rabichon,
Augustin Rebetez, Patrick Tosani
from November 19th 2022 to March 18th 2023
When Francis Ponge wrote Le Parti pris des choses (The Nature of Things)
in 1942 the war was global and terrible. As bombs rained down from the
skies of the European continent, the poet began to scrutinise the most
ordinary objects of his daily life. Prose poems dedicated to the crate,
the bread or the candle follow one another in this Parti pris des choses
that has become a monument of literature.
“It is by starting from the ground up,” explains the author, “that one
has some chance of rising (…) If I devote myself to such a subject, it
is because it makes me engage entirely, because it challenges me,
provokes me (…) it is a head-to-head game, to the point of losing one’ s
mind.”
In fact, what the author of Le Savon and La Crevette dans tous ses états
takes seriously, this thing, the object of all his attention, which he
will pursue for the rest of his life, is language.
Within the walls of their studio or their house, the artists gathered
here take as their subjects spoons, potatoes, toothbrushes and even the
now essential cell phone: all things conveniently ordinary. In their
company, the artists undertake to “disaffect” their medium, be it
photography or video. Nothing is more pleasing,” the poet once said,
“than the constant insurrection of things against the images imposed
upon them. Things don’t accept to remain still and silent like images.
The artist, like the writer, has this recurring daydream: he chooses an
object, approaches it, turns around it; yet he fails to depict the
object portrayed, which slips away, or even rebels. Stubbornly, he
returns to it to resume the dialogue with the thing. The exhibition
shows these secret conversations. Whether they are solemn or absurd,
ascetic or long-winded, they all express the tenacious desire of each of
them to find their way of being in the world.
