(un mural, des tableaux)

 

Opening  Wednesday 21 january

 

With Jean-Luc Blanc, Denis Castellas, Nina Childress, Stéphane Dafflon, Kaye Donachie, Sylvie Fanchon, Johannes Kahrs, Elodie Lesourd, Bernhard Martin, Florian et Michael Quistrebert, Loïc Raguénès, Ida Tursic/Wilfried Mille

 

Curator : Xavier Franceschi

 

With (un mural, des tableaux)  le plateau is for once presenting an exhibition made up exclusively of paintings, a selection of works recently acquired and now part of the frac île-de-france collection.

Far from being a manifesto show aimed at demonstrating the persistence of painting in the contemporary art arena,  (un mural, des tableaux) is a thoroughly subjective proposition based on a very precise procedure which has been respected to the letter.

First and foremost, then, paintings. And paintings—from the collection—made with materials and on surfaces which this very specific field has historically defined as immutable and intangible: acrylic, gouache and oil on canvas or else just on wood, leaving aside all those works which we liken to painting without being made of it.

Next, the principle of only showing a single artist—or even a single painting—per room, in accordance with the desire to respect the autonomy—and hence the reading—of each one of the works on view. Thus, (un mural, des tableaux) can indiscriminately present paintings from across the very diverse fields of pictorial creation, from the most radical abstraction to the most unfettered figuration. This principle introduces a very particular division of the areas at le plateau, making for an architecture that is determined by the precise number of paintings selected.

Finally, in keeping with this need to structure space, the exhibition is focused around the presentation of a mural painting by Stéphane Dafflon—PM 062—which spreads into all le plateau’s different spaces and, it just so happens, determines the way all the other pictures are hung. In this sense, the procedural principle of (un mural, des tableaux)  is incorporated in the procedure informing PM 062, for Stéphane Dafflon’s work has also been conceived as nothing less than an exhibition device making it possible to show other pictorial works and, in particular, other artists.

In the tradition of many exhibitions organized around the  frac collection—one such being Paint it Black which was recently at le plateau–, (un mural, des tableaux)  is thus defined by strict rules. It also proposes a novel exhibition method for and vision of a set of works which, over and above the immutable nature of a medium, are all informed by a form of radicalness: that same radicalness that is at work in their own method of presentation.