Sans réserve
Sans Réserve is the Frac’s new director Etienne Bernard’s first dive into the roughly five thousand works of the collection. The exhibition is his opportunity to make a statement regarding his project for the institution’s future.
We discover works as opportunities to exchange, share and invent. In addition, we take a look behind the scenes through presentations of the way in which the works are preserved and taken care of.
From November 30, 2019 to April 26, 2020, Frac Bretagne is presenting the exhibition Sans Réserve, dive into a collection of contemporary art.
A collection that speaks of the world without (any) reserve
Through a selection of nearly fifty works, Sans Réserve presents the collection as a starting point for debate, without fear of problematising the struggles facing our contemporary world.
The exhibition is thought of as a platform for exchange, where issues related to climate and to the industrial era are discussed through the works of Goldschmied & Chiari and Étienne Bossut, to cultural identities and minorities with Katia Kameli and Mohamed Bourouissa, and to work and social struggles with Jean Hélion and Olga Chernysheva.
A collection we live in, a collection as a platform for collective experience
The nodal point of the exhibition is a walkable installation by Lorient-based artist Cyrille Mariën. It is a small structure that resembles a shelter or a bandstand. From there, the exhibition extends outward to become a support for collective experience through debates about the issues that animate our world, performances, interdisciplinary programming, and more.
The Frac Bretagne collection is an open heritage, one to be lived, played with and shared.
A collection that inhabits Odile Decq’s architecture
Since 2012, the Frac Bretagne has been housed in a remarkable work of architecture designed by the French architect Odile Decq. As the emblem of Frac Bretagne, the building is both the flagship of its activities in the region and the storehouse of its collection. Without reservation, the works exit the storage and exhibition spaces to enter into dialogue with the building. In the halls, at the turn of a staircase or a section of the wall, the works emerge, playing with the architecture, its circulation, and its scale.
A collection that we take care of
Sans reserve is also a dive into the heart of the functioning of the collection. Due to a climatic incident that occurred in the painting reserve, a treatment and proofing program for the collection is underway, and the choice to involve the public in the process through a unique platform of cultural mediation has been made.
One of the exhibition galleries has thus been transformed into a storage space in which the public is invited to enter and to discover the behind-the-scenes of a collection, the way it is treated, inventoried, and restored… that is to say, how a collection is looked after and taken care of.
Image : Étienne Bossut, New…, 1998-1999. Collection Frac Bretagne © Étienne Bossut. Crédit photo : Marc Domage