Le Renne
With the support of :
Le renne
One of the most original and recognised voices in contemporary painting, Norwegian artist.
Fredrik Værslev navigates between different pictorial traditions. In his practice, he focuses on the process of painting, demonstrating the possibilities and relevance of the medium today.
His works are born out of the encounter between architecture and painting and take the form of painted renderings of motifs from the artist’s daily life.
He treats his paintings as objects, often created by more or less laborious, serial or deterministic processes, in which time itself, as well as various external factors, become active co-creators of the work.
In several series, he has left his paintings outside for long periods, allowing time and external wear and tear to complete them. Other works use seemingly clichéd techniques, motifs or quotations from art history (for example, dripping and splashing). Fredrik Værslev also challenges the painting process by freely collaborating with other artists or by using non-traditional painting tools, such as spray cans or equipment used to paint roads and stadiums. His paintings often oscillate between abstraction and representation, as evidenced by his groundbreaking Terrazzo series, which mimics the materiality of Italian stone floors while appealing to the expressiveness and spontaneity of abstract expressionism. The Canopy series is reminiscent of modernism and its striped paintings, but has its origins in the awnings of the artist’s childhood home.
His forthcoming exhibition in October 2022 in Rennes, the fruit of a discussion begun in 2015 with Etienne Bernard, director of the Frac Bretagne and curator of the exhibition, is intended to be an important step in his career.
It will constitute a form of retrospective of his entire production over the past 15 years.
The artist will present a new series that will serve as a “re-reading rail” for his older series. Thus, the exhibition presented on more than 500 square meters of the Grande Galerie Sud of the Frac Bretagne will bring together about thirty masterpieces.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published in French and English by Dilecta, Paris.
THE ARTIST
Fredrik Værslev was born in Moss, Norway in 1979 and lives and works mainly in Oslo.
He started his career as an artist by making graffiti for 10 years, and it was only afterwards that he received an education in contemporary art. Following his studies at the Malmö Art Academy and the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt, he began a series of paintings entitled Terrazzo paintings.
For some, Fredrik Værslev’s work is placed in an undefined space and he himself speaks of “appositions of signs of the world”. He is considered one of the most original artists in contemporary art.
Visuel : © Fredrik Værslev
Les lézards
In partnership with :
Les lézards Lizards
Frac Bretagne-Art Norac Award 2022 : The Nominees
Without following a specific theme, the exhibition bringing together the four artists nominated for the Frac Bretagne-Art Norac Award is an attempt to highlight positions, temperaments and perspectives on the world that engage peculiar patterns of attention.
Like the lizards which suddenly appear and immediately disappear, the artists gathered here are interested in transitory states, in moments of shifting from one angle to another, in the body’s impermanence and fragility. Some of the artworks have an ephemeral life, as they develop in response to the exhibition space, and then vanish or persist in another form in another place.
We owe to lizards the origin of the French expressions “lézarder”[1] and “faire le lézard”[2] which evoke states of stasis and lack of movement, often negatively perceived as unproductive moments.
But the lizard’s stillness can never be reduced to immobility or simple rest because motionless under the sun, the lizard is always on the lookout.
For philosopher Jérôme Lèbre, author of « L’Éloge de l’immobilité », immobility corresponds to the decision of occupying a place and holding a stance.
In this age of acceleration, of the need for mobility and flexibility, being an artist means, first of all, making the choice to stop. To stand in a place, not in order to withdraw from the world but on the contrary, to open up the space of possibilities.
Through the lens of very different visual and conceptual approaches, Reda Boussella, Clémence Estève, Fanny Gicquel and Valérian Goalec call upon inaction, slowness, dreams, horizontality as well as fall and failure, because of their potential to resist the thirst for verticality, success and achievement that prevails our present time.
In Valérian Goalec’s installation, this can for instance take the form of a poetic diversion from the standardised architecture of prize-giving venues, subtly questioning the relevance of the notion of competitiveness in the artistic field.
In Reda Boussella’s sculptures, combat sports training equipment can transform into burlesque components, and a scary Malinois Sheperd’s bite into a tender waltz.
Clémence Estève distorts history of art’s great sculptures’ silouhettes, scoliosis being for her a way to question social injonctions on the straightening up of the body, as well as a way to move away while staying set, to grasp a motion where the body seems still.
Trough slowness and slowdown, Fanny Gicquel’s performances are an invitation to contemplation to the point of creating images close from a living painting, which interrogates our current methods in relationships and communication.
The artists suggest that the vulnerability of our environment and bodies gives access to the ability to grow new forms of sharing, of presence and care.
But also to invent new interaction strategies and fresh looks regarding our bodies and their transformations on a physical, intimate and social level.
[1] Lizarding.
[2] Acting like a lizard.
THE ARTISTS
Reda Boussella
Clémence Estève
Fanny Gicquel
Valérian Goalec
the Frac Bretagne–Art Norac Award
Launched in 2020, the Frac Bretagne–Art Norac Award aims to support the professional development of Brittany-based artists at the international level. The award is a Frac Bretagne initiative supported by Art Norac, the sponsorship association of the Norac group. The goal of the award is to help bring artists active in the region to the international scene, in order to promote the professionalisation of their journey beyond the borders of France.
Les lézards is the exhibition bringing together the 4 finalist artists. During the opening, the winner will be announced. His/Her work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland in 2023.
Top images : Clémence Estève – Photo credit: Denis Estève / Fanny Gicquel – Photo credit: Malo Legrand / © Valérian Goalec / Reda Boussella – Photo credit: All rights reserved.
Eyesore
Eyesore
Isabelle Cornaro (1974, France) uses a range of media including drawing, photography, video and installation. Her works often reference animated films, iconic landscape design and exhibition views, sourced from historical and cultural archives. Her practice counter-intuitively employs a conceptual approach to investigate the ways in which objects and artworks are propped up, animated and fetishized. She works with familiar objects specifically selected for their sentimental or symbolic value, as a means of triggering a semiotic reading of these objects as opposed to an affected sense of recognition.
In the animated film Eyesore (2019) which entered the Frac Bretagne collection in 2022, her work on the plasticity of forms focuses on typical social places, whether urban, intimate or private, crossed by violent, enigmatic phenomena. Short sequences, like so many snippets of unresolved plots, depict abrupt state changes from animate to inanimate – including characters metamorphosing into objects. Some scenes evoke current events, others the twilight atmospheres of a science-fiction story, between synesthesia and melancholy. In this film, Isabelle Cornaro develops metaphors for unbridled consumption that are as humorous as they are horrific, showing human bodies evolving into useless commodities and meaningless monuments, ultimately ending in a ruined world.
Digital film
Duration: 2’30 ”
Animation and drawing : Victorin Ripert
Purchased from the Balice Hertling Gallery in 2022
Produced with the support of the Fondation des artistes
Visuel : Isabelle cornaro, Eyesore, 2019 (capture – detail), Frac Bretagne collection © Isabelle Cornaro / ADAGP, Paris 2022