![Tauba Auerbach, [2,3], 2011 (detail), Frac Bretagne collection © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Photo credit: Steven Probert](https://www.fracbretagne.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2.3Tauba-Auerbach_PhotosHDStevenProbert_bandeauWeb-scaled.jpg?x82342)
[2,3]
[2,3]
[2,3] – for 2 and 3D – is the title of the book by the artist Tauba Auerbach that will enter the collection in 2021 and that the Frac Bretagne will display for the first time in Rennes, from 21 January to 15 May 2022.
In this boxed set of artist’s books, six slim hardcover volumes open onto gigantic shapes inspired by complex geometric figures: pyramid, sphere, ziggurat, octagonal bipyramid (diamond), Möbius strip, etc. Reminiscent of children’s pop-up books, they are revealed in a palette of luminous and contrasting colours which recall the artist’s work.
[2,3] is the universal mathematical symbol for the closed interval between the integers two and three. For Tauba Auerbach, it marks the interstice in which she operates to animate 2D into 3D, allowing the cut-out shapes of the flattened and folded paper to be majestically transformed into expanded sculptures. The apparent fragility of the process starts a dialogue with the manifest qualities of stability and sturdiness traditionally associated with sculpture, to achieve a subtle union of emptiness and fullness.
This development of forms in space constitutes an important stage in the evolution of the artist’s work at the beginning of the 2010s. Until then restricted to optical effects on the flatness of the canvas (shadow plays replicating volume), her works open up to the third dimension and explore in a more comprehensive way this marked interest in the perception and animation of the surface.
THE ARTIST
Tauba Auerbarch (1981, USA)
The multidisciplinary artist Tauba Auerbach concentrates in her artistic practice the legacy of a visual arts education, a formative experience as a lettering artist and an inexhaustible interest in scientific phenomena.
Although Tauba Auerbach’s inspiration comes mainly from mathematics and physics, her visual investigations, which combine painting, drawing, photography and publishing, also refer to the great themes of art history. Her work interrogates in an unprecedented way certain fundamental themes, amongst which the representation of a three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface, the relationship between abstraction and representation, as well as chromatic perception and the issue of the fourth colour beyond the red-green-blue spectrum (RGB).
Through numerous collaborations with musicians, scientists, engineers and new technology companies, she develops her artistic research by trying to make complex notions perceptible through diverted means and unexpected diagonals. https://www.fracbretagne.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Pilote-numero3-printemps2022-2-3-1.pdf
Image: Tauba Auerbach, [2,3], 2011, (détail). Collection Frac Bretagne © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Crédit photographique : Steven Probert
SLEEP SPACES / LES ESPACES DU SOMMEIL
With the support of Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of the FACE Foundation and the cultural services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Sleep Spaces / Les espaces du sommeil
Winner of the Frac Bretagne – Art Norac Award in 2021, Corentin Canesson presents a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, USA.
Corentin Canesson confronts the constructs and legacies of painting by reconsidering conventional modes of display, questioning the notion of singular authorship, and continually pressing upon the distinction between figuration and abstraction. Canesson’s paintings are often witty and ironic, evident in his choices of playful and wry subject matter such as anthropomorphized animals and passages of text culled from canonical works of art and popular culture. Music is also central to his practice and present throughout his collective work.
Sleep Spaces / Les espaces du sommeil is named for a poem written between 1919 and 1929 by the influential French surrealist poet Robert Desnos. Written with the kind of free associations that are characteristic of surrealist automatic writing, Desnos’ “Les espaces du sommeil” combines the sounds and sights of the night, of dreaming, with the constant refrain, “there you are… there you are.” In Sleep Spaces / Les espaces du sommeil, the surrealist strategy of combining disparate and seemingly incongruous references, objects, and symbols becomes a curatorial conceit to construct new associations, achieved by combining historical and contemporary works of art. Sleep Spaces / Les espaces du sommeil positions the works of artists such as Willem de Kooning and Renée Levi, Ed Ruscha and Corentin Canesson, Joseph Beuys and Shirley Jaffe in productive dialogue within the context of the gallery. These groupings challenge us to consider how we interpret works of art and how curatorial choices aid in this process. Canesson’s site-responsive installation attempts to do just this, by fostering new modes of interpretation through surprising moments of connection.
The exhibition also features an ambient soundtrack with music from Canesson’s experimental band, TNHCH.
With contributions by: Cande Aguilar, John James Audubon, Joseph Beuys, Corentin Canesson, Robert Desnos, Damien Le Dévédec, Jean-Pierre Dolveck, Joey Fauerso, Constance Forsyth, Hilary Galbreaith, Camille Girard and Paul Brunet, Lola Gonzàlez, Josquin Gouilly Frossard, Josselin Guillois, Jim Hamilton, Shirley Jaffe, Ana Jotta, Willem de Kooning, Pierre Leguillon, Renée Levi, Jean-François Maurige, The Missing Season, Joan Mitchell, Samir Mougas, Ester Partegàs, Emily Peacock, Mario Perez, Phillip Pyle, II, Juliette Roche, Ed Ruscha, Alisson Schmitt, Amy Sillman, Gertrude Stein, TNHCH, Anaïs Touchot, Achraf Touloub, Lise Traino, and Nicolas Weber Besora.
THE ARTIST
Born in 1988, Corentin Canesson lives and works between Brest and Paris.
Graduated from EESAB-Rennes in 2011, he participated to the 21st Prize of Fondation d’entreprise Ricard Le Fil d’Alerte. He has presented solo exhibitions at Satorgallery (2020), at Nathalie Obadiagallery), at Crédac – Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry-sur-Seine (2017) and at Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain Passerelle de Brest (2015).
THE FRAC BRETAGNE – ART NORAC AWARD
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.
Each year, a partner structure in Europe or the rest of the world that is prepared to welcome an artist living and working in Brittany to produce a personal exhibition will be associated with the program.
+ Visit the Visual Arts Center website
+ More about the Frac Bretagne – Art Norac Award
Imagery: Corentin Canesson, Sleep Spaces (Gouesnou), 2021 (details) © Corentin Canesson/ADAGP, Paris. Photo credit : Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sator, Paris
Les Pas
Les Pas
Internationally renowned for his illustrations produced for prestigious clients such as The New York Times, the Centre Pompidou, Les Inrocks, The Guardian, RCA Records, National Geographic and the Grand Palais, the Breton artist Jean Jullien has been developing a graphic commentary on the contemporary world that is as amusing as it is acerbic.
Populated by what he calls his Paper People, Jullien’s universe draws as much from the popular culture of this child of the 1980s as from the history of poster art – from Ungerer to Savignac. More recently, he returned to the South Finistere coast of his childhood to devote himself to painting. From Lesconil to La Torche, he observes dunes, boats and surfers, with all the genius of the line that we know, giving the feeling of wanting to escape from the schizophrenia of press commentary to put the long time on canvas.
For his solo exhibition Les Pas in Clohars-Carnoët, Jean Jullien invested this small village in Finistere where some of the heroes of the Pont-Aven School settled at the end of the 19th century.
One of his Paper People leaves the paper sheet to go on a journey in the steps of his illustrious predecessors, in volume and on a human scale. We discover him sitting in the tavern-inn where the painters stayed, run at the time by Marie Henry (today reconstituted identically at the Maison Musée du Pouldu), lying on the beach of Le Pouldu whose landscapes and famous light inspired them so much, or working, brush in hand, in the Chapelle Saint-Jacques, transformed into an artist’s studio.
This artistic fiction through the village continues at La Longère with an exhibition retracing the history of Paper People in Jean Jullien’s practice.
Discover the work of the artist: jeanjullien.com
Event organized in partnership with the City of Clohars-Carnoët.
Image: Paper people © Jean Jullien