Exhibition

Curation: Dorothée Dupuis, Céline Kopp and Sandra Patron.
February 14 - April 19, 2015, public opening on February 13 from 6PM
Panorama, Friche La Belle de Mai

As part of the program conceived in celebration of Triangle France’s 20th anniversary, we are pleased to introduce Moucharabieh, a group exhibition, and a series of performances and events in direct dialogue with the accompanying solo exhibition Sculptures by Margaret Honda. For this occasion, the two former directors of Triangle France, Sandra Patron (1999-2007), and Dorothée Dupuis (2007-2012), as well as current director Céline Kopp (since 2012) have decided to collaborate and curate a program affirming the continuity of Triangle France’s commitment towards artists and critical thinking. Artists and speakers have been brought together and invited to address a common question: What is the nature of commitment and what are the conditions of maintaining it? In this context, we are pleased to present a new commission by French artist Clémence Seilles (b. 1984). In lending its title to the exhibition, this work functions as a dynamic structure to which artists were invited to respond with new works, performances, and events.

Clémence Seilles’s installation consists of several sculptural elements formally and conceptually responding to each other and displayed in various areas of the exhibition space. The overall project brings to mind ideas of shared authority, knowledge as practice, inclusivity, and cross practices. One element, a large-scale structure containing a table resembling a dystopic director’s desk or meeting table appears as a nodal point or an ambiguous control tower for the overall project. Each component concentrates and repeats symbols and forms, while keeping them adjustable and polysemic in favor of maintaining the possibility of further translations and formal responses. The work reacts to the presence of invited artists, professionals and the public. It associates architectural elements, bleachers and detachable walls, as well as a space for pressure relief, storage, work, and maintenance. Clémence Seilles proposes to simultaneously and successively engage with ideas and functions, creating a set of circumstances emancipated from the mechanical contingencies of traditional exhibitions venues, which she deconstructs.

The heart of the proposal revolves around a formal vocabulary borrowed from the traditions of oriental architecture. At the center of the space a monumental shallow pool, also working as a pedestal, evokes the architectural device of a riad (inner courtyard), whose space is traditionally conceived around the presence of a flat surface of water to maintain coolness. The walls created by Clémence Seilles recall the principles of the moucharabieh, an open grid creating a transparent or opaque surface depending on the position of the visitor. This natural ventilation system allows one to see without being seen, staying in the shade and resisting the sun. It controls air and light and was also traditionally conceived to keep women away from public sight. Over the years, political inequity, feminism and gender issues have been subjects regularly present in Triangle France’s program. Here, according to Clémence Seilles, the moucharabieh functions like “a heterogeneous catalyst significantly modifying compounds present in the space”. It becomes a figure of the plurality of positions presented in the project, and expresses a vision of power whose exercise is understood as an active spirit of openness, rather than as a restrictive force.

If Clémence Seilles’s work acts as a catalyst within this exhibition, the other artists would be the catalyst’s reagents. The equation suggests a state of transformation and experimentation leading towards an active production of alternatives and a refusal of a rigid state of being.

A new work by Clémence Seilles especially commissioned for the occasion and created in collaboration with Deborah Bowmann, Theo Demans, Laure Jaffuel and SANKS.

Artworks, new commissions and performances by: Eva Barto, Raymond Boisjoly, Jean-Alain Corre, Hedwig Houben, Rémi Illig, Gail Pickering, Monica Restrepo, Sabrina Soyer, Thomas Teurlai, Lina Viste Grønli, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Talks and events with: Alessio Antoniolli, Tenzing Barshee, Dorothée Dupuis, Géraldine Gourbe, Margaret Honda, Céline Kopp, Sandra Patron, Bruno Peinado, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Alun Williams, etc.