Jeremy Deller

Art is Magic

Art is Magic is the first French retrospective of the celebrated English artist Jeremy Deller (1966, London), winner of the prestigious 2004 Turner Prize and Britain’s representative at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
Deller is interested in popular culture and counter-cultures. His artistic inquiries focus not just on social issues and history but also on music. Deller’s oeuvre is tinged with acerbic humour and conscious socio-political discourse, making a connection between vernacular or mass culture and the world of work. The artist’s quest has led him to explore the social history of his country and further afield via the social conflict of the Thatcher era, the pop group Depeche Mode, the world of wrestling, the spawning ground of Brexit… and even acid house and the rave movement. In each case, Deller has constantly strived to involve other people in the creative process.
The Art is Magic exhibition provides a broad overview of Deller’s work from the 1990s to the present day, focusing on 15 major projects and key works that have marked his career. In addition, the event will be an opportunity to publish the first retrospective of the artist’s work in French.

Art is Magic exhibition is a city-wide co-production that takes place in the spaces of Frac Bretagne, La Criée Centre d’art contemporain and the Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes.

It is part of the Exporama summer season organised by the City of Rennes and Rennes Métropole. It resonates with the exhibition Forever Sixties of the Pinault Collection, at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes, which explores the spirit of the 1960s between liberation and repression.