Wilfrid Almendra, Étienne Chambaud, Keren Cytter, Philippe Decrauzat, Dunne & Raby / Michael Anastassiades, Morgan Fisher, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Élise Florenty, Mark Geffriaud, Francesco Gennari, Jimmy Robert, Bojan Sarcevic, John Stezaker, Ricardo Valentim, Christoph Weber
Notorious is a set of works acquired by the Frac Île-de-France over the past two years. Beyond the title with its explicit reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s film-oddly translated into French as Les enchainés, The Shackled – the exhibition veers markedly towards film: it actually incorporates several screenings – some 16 mm (Morgan Fisher, Philippe Decrauzat) and includes works which make more or less direct reference thereto (John Stezacker, Keren Cytter, Étienne Chambaud, Wilfred Almendra).
In this context, it may be a matter of notoriety and celebrity – or else the reverse, in a form of anonymity which is highlighted and magnified: whence the series Calais by Bruna Serralongue – but it is above all a matter of a succession of enigmas which, if not Hitchcockian, are at least deeply alarming: from the work of Morgan Fisher in the form of parentheses encompassing a host of inserts from Hollywood movies, to the unlikely pseudo-prehistoric landscapes of Jean-Pascal Flavien, from Jimmy Robert’s installation with several unknown women to the evocation of an extra-terrestrial two-dimensional world by Philippe Decrauzat, from John Stezacker’s surrealist collages to the merrily mystical manifestations of Francesco Gennari, the interrogative form, and the resulting eerieness, readily give way to a thoroughly supernatural dimension.
Well removed from any theory to do with relations between contemporary art and film, Notorious thus establishes a potential thread, but is also a proposal conceived to permit viewers, first and foremost, to have, in a state of perfect autonomy, the best perception of each one of the exhibited works that have just been added to the collection.
Curator : Xavier Franceschi, Frac Île-de-France’s director