Untitled
(Corrupting the Absolute)

Deposit of the Centre national des arts plastiques

Born in 1960, Berlin-based Austrian artist Peter Friedl is a major presence on the international art scene. He started out as a theatre critic in the early 1980s, before devoting himself to the visual arts, and he retains a strong connection to the theatre. This is reflected in his exhibitions, which are made like actual sets, with and without set changes, according to the complexity of the project.
In a quest for new narrative forms, his projects explore, in specifically organized contexts, the construction of history and concepts, always informed by revisiting major themes, including childhood, history, sociology and the animal world. With wit and irony, the artist points out the dead ends of modernity, between the utopias of yesterday and today’s compromises.
The many references in his works, and the various methods he uses to express them (drawing, video, photography, installation, etc.) constitute a dense corpus, blending the suggestion of personal history with that of the collective. Friedl’s work is difficult to grasp in an instant; rather, it demands to be considered dynamically. The artist explains that he is looking for ambiguity and confusion, never the precision of an immediate reading. In 1998 he claimed “that misunderstanding is part of understanding”.

Untitled (Corrupting the Absolute) is composed of handwritten letters in red neon.
It transcribes a reference, jotted down in one of the many notebooks that the artist – an attentive observer – carries with him during the course of his daily life, borrowed from the American essayist and rock critic Greil Marcus*.
An underground cult figure, Marcus likes to underscore the oppositions and contrary forces that construct an artist’s genius, just as Peter Friedl emphasizes the analogies as much as the ruptures and gaps that provoke vertigo.
“Corrupting the Absolute” asserts itself as an abstract injunction to remind us that art, if it exists, does not deliver answers, that it first and foremost pushes us to question ourselves. Installed in the lobby, this piece can be seen as an introduction to the philosophy of the Frac Bretagne.

*Corrupting the Absolute is the title of a chapter of the untranslated book: In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992, published by Greil Marcus in 1993.

Image : Peter Friedl Untitled (Corrupting the Absolute), 2000 FNAC 02-773 Centre national des arts plastiques © Peter Friedl – Photo credit : Galerie Erna Hécey (Luxembourg)

En coulisses

Yes ! There are backstage at the Frac. The display is full of surprises, don’t you think? These heights, the visual echoes between paintings and photographs are indeed astonishing. Maybe you already know it : this collection is yours. It is a common good that a team of professionals is taking care of so that in decades, we can still understand and appreciate it.
The Frac Bretagne collection brings together works of artists from different generations and art scenes whether local, regional and international. Abstraction is one of the historical bases of the collection which also unfolds around thematic axes: works in relation to nature, that question the status of the contemporary image, the artist as a witness to his/her time, as well as as large monographic bodies.
The works go in and out from this storage for exhibitions and participatory projects. The FRACs are indeed the most widely distributed public collections in France. This principle of mobility defines these institutions as essential players in regional policies aiming to reduce geographical and social disparities in access to culture. Thus, FRACs are facilitating the discovery of contemporary art by the most diverse types of publics.
For you, the Frac has recorded voices to listen to. You’ll her an improbable flight attendant, fine connoisseur of conservation issues, witnesses recounting their memories of the works that you can see, technicians who know the collection better than anyone, works that speak to each other… and also the public with whom the Frac sets up numerous projects throughout the region and who has bring art pieces into their venues.

Image : Storage on show, 2021, Frac Bretagne, Rennes. Photo credit : Aurélien Mole

The sculptures of the Domaine de Kerguéhennec

The history of the Frac Bretagne is closely linked to that of the sculpture park of the Domaine de Kerguéhennec in Morbihan, which in the 1980s was a magnificent playground for artists as prestigious as Richard Long, Giuseppe Penone and Jean Pierre Raynaud.
Their experiments in this Morbihan park helped build the identity of the Frac and its collection, which is particularly oriented towards landscape issues.

WORKS FROM THE FRAC BRETAGNE COLLECTION

• François Bouillon, Cène d’extérieur, 1986-1987
• Etienne Hajdu, Sept colonnes à Stéphane Mallarmé, 1969-1971
• Harald Klingelhöller, Mit Buchstaben der Worte : Unrecht schreit (avec les lettres de : l’injustice crie), 1995
• Richard Long, Un cercle en Bretagne (A circle in Brittany), 1986
• Guiseppe Penone, Sentier de charme, 1986
• Jean-Pierre Raynaud, 1000 pots bétonnés peints pour une serre ancienne, 1986
• Ulrich Rückriem, Bild Stock, 1985
• Keith Sonnier, Porte-vue, 1987

Free admission
The park is open every day (except in case of weather alert)

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Image : Richard Long, Un cercle en Bretagne (A Circle in Brittany), 1986. Parc du domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan © ADAGP, Paris. Photo credit: Florian Kleinefenn.

Saint-Carré, 1991

In 1991, Robert Milin was invited to participate in Escales, an event curated by Jérôme Sans, which proposed to invest various places in the Côtes-d’Armor in a close relationship with the landscape. The artist then became interested in a small rural commune, Saint-Carré, and its inhabitants, with whom he made friends. Sharing with them the local life, at the crossroads of ancestral activities – work of the fields and care of the animals – and of the modern life, he has soon access to the personal photographs of several families.
In these boxes lie as many silent witnesses of the collective religious or secular events that have marked the village, as intimate moments that take on importance only in the history of each. He chose to bring 13 of these photos to light by enlarging them, transferring them either to enamel plates or to porcelain, and placing them, with the active complicity of the inhabitants, in different parts of Saint-Carré: the playground, the gable of a barn, the henhouse, etc. In doing so, he created a work of public art that overturned the usual canons, notably in the relationship between the private and the public: the private became public and the entire village an open-air exhibition space.
In 1994, the Frac Bretagne acquired Saint-Carré, a work that particularly resonates with one of its essential missions, to bring the citizen closer to the challenges of today’s art. Like any work in the public space, Saint-Carré has suffered the assaults of time and the vagaries of weather. Carried by the common will of the inhabitants, the Frac Bretagne and the artist, a restoration was undertaken at the good care of the latter in 2018. In addition to the renovation of certain pieces, this process led to the reorganization of the hanging, to take into account the changes in ownership, the evolution of the building and the roadway.

WORK FROM THE FRAC BRETAGNE COLLECTION

Image : Robert Milin, Chan’nic, Saint-Carré, 1991 © Robert Milin – Photo credit: Frac Bretagne