L’ART HABITE-IL EN RÉGION?
(DOES ART LIVE IN THE REGIONS?)

With: AUVERGNE-RHÔNE-ALPES: Anaïs Prouzet
BOURGOGNE-FRANCHE-COMTÉ: Cécile Maulini
BRETAGNE: Julie C Fortier
CENTRE-VAL DE LOIRE: Ségolène Thuillart
CORSE: Amalia Vargas
GRAND EST: Léa Barbazanges
GUADELOUPE: Françoise Sémiramoth
GUYANE: Collectif Lova Lova
HAUTS-DE-FRANCE: Alfonse, Paul et les Autres
ÎLE-DE-FRANCE: Loïs Szymczack
LA RÉUNION: Esther Hoareau
MARTINIQUE: Annabel Guérédat
MAYOTTE: Mounir Allaoui
NORMANDIE: Héloïse Bariol
NOUVELLE-AQUITAINE: Jean Bonichon
OCCITANIE: Agnès Fornells
PAYS DE LA LOIRE: Julien Gorgeart
PROVENCE-ALPES-CÔTE D’AZUR: Léo Fourdrinier

During my first visit to the unusual space of the Couvent des Cordeliers in Châteauroux, an unexpected image came to mind. This chapel, 50 meters long and only 10 meters wide, whose walls cannot hold any artwork, immediately reminded me… of a huge refrigerator door.
It was probably the necessity of designing the exhibition using only the floor that transformed, in my visual imagination, this rectangular volume into a familiar vertical surface. This strange analogy instantly brought me back to a childhood memory: the magnets shaped like French departments, given away in packages of frozen cordon bleu from a famous food brand.

I recalled my father patiently trying, despite missing pieces, to reconstruct the map of France on the family fridge door, while I had fun mixing everything up (to his great despair). Each magnet bore the name of the main city of the department, accompanied by a representative pictogram: a volcano for Puy-de-Dôme, a heron for the Parc de la Brenne in Indre…
Today, as a curator and lecturer, I have traveled throughout France meeting artists who live and create there. And one question crossed my mind: What would a map of French artists look like?

How would I proceed if I had to choose (like the magnets) one artist to represent each region? Who for Brittany? For Guyane? Do I know someone in Hauts-de-France? In Mayotte? And for Île-de-France, where so many artists live, how to decide? I got caught up in the game. And so the idea for this exhibition was born.

Through an original scenography project, the exhibition floor becomes a sensitive map: each of France’s 18 regions is symbolized on the floor by a cutout covering shaped like its territory—a warm nod to the magnets from my childhood. In each territory, one artist exhibits their work, or a group of works. Thus is composed an artistic map of France (mine!), created from subjective, personal, and deliberate choices.

This is not meant to be a representative overview of the entire regional French art scene, nor a ranking. These choices were made humbly, based on affinities, favorites, encounters, recommendations, or even chance. These artists touched, intrigued, and inspired me. It is this intimate cartography that I invite you to discover, while imagining your own. French art is rich and diverse enough for this exhibition to exist in thousands of different configurations.

Couvent des Cordeliers (Musée Bertrand) – Châteauroux (36)
June 20 – September 21, 2025

REVOIR ANAÏS
(SEEING ANAÏS AGAIN)

An exhibition by Anaïs Prouzet

La Chapelle – École d’Art de Riom
Riom (63)
February 15 – May 3, 2025

COMBIEN DE GALETS POUR VOIR LE LIT D’UNE RIVIÈRE?
(HOW MANY PEBBLES TO SEE THE BED OF A RIVER?)

An exhibition by Élisabeth Amblard

La Chapelle – École d’Art de Riom
Riom (63)
September 21 – November 23, 2024

ECOS DEL ALMA

An exhibition by Gemma Alpuente

First exhibition in France of the Spanish artist Gemma Alpuente, whose work oscillates between painting and sculpture.

La Chapelle – École d’Art de Riom
Riom (63)
June 15 – August 31, 2024

LA NUÉe
(THE SWARM)

An exhibition by Jean Bonichon

A monumental installation specially imagined and designed for the Chapel space at the École d’Art de Riom

La Chapelle – École d’Art de Riom
Riom (63)
February 10 – May 11, 2024

COHABITER
(COHABITATE)

A solo exhibition of ANNABELLE FOLLIET

An exhibition centered on the photographic practice of Annabelle Folliet, presented through a scenography specifically designed for the exhibition space.

La Chapelle – School of Art of Riom
Riom (63)
October 6 – December 23, 2023

ABSURDE
(Absurd)

A solo exhibition by SÉBASTIEN LAYRAL

An exhibition inspired by Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus, in which painter Sébastien Layral painted live over the course of three months within the exhibition space.

La Chapelle – School of Art of Riom
Riom (63)
February 24 – May 24, 2023

DOUBLE

A solo exhibition by HÉLÈNE LATTE

It is often mistakenly thought that abstract painting is less structured, less complex than figurative painting — as if one could simply throw shapes and colors onto the canvas without caring about the result (some do, indeed, with no result whatsoever). This is far from the truth. Abstract painting, especially with a geometric component (as opposed to a more expressionist abstraction where the gesture is freer, rounder, more subject to chance), is incisive work, of formidable precision, allowing no approximation. When speaking of abstraction, I often think of the Latin phrase ordo ab chaos (“order arises from chaos”). If we apply this idea to art, I believe abstract painters completely master that chaos. And Hélène Latte’s painting perfectly illustrates this controlled, mastered chaos, creating a certain harmony.

For as disconcerting as it may be to the eye, the artist’s work remains compelling. Yet this is not its only contradiction. Let us remember that a painter’s work is not about seduction. It is a deeply rooted belief, but one that must be challenged. Painting is not decoration, and it has as little use for the notion of beauty as a triathlete does for a deckchair. That is why I insist on the biting edge of Hélène Latte’s canvases. One can create images without seeking to seduce at all costs, and still arrive at something undeniably beautiful. I would almost call it a raw, biting beauty. Here we are in an aesthetic of dissonance, where the organic contends with the mechanical, and the digital wrestles with the numeric. It is a kind of painting that keeps the viewer at a distance, one that can never truly be grasped.

We often speak of certain works of art as artifacts that ask questions (and, incidentally, never provide answers). In this respect, I believe Hélène’s painting is more of an enigma than a question.

La Chapelle – School of Art of Riom
Riom (63)
October 8 – December 17, 2022

Ouverture(s)
(OPENING(S))

With: JULIA HUTEAU, ANN VERONICA JANSSENS, CATHY JARDON, THIERRY LIÉGEOIS, GABRIEL MAFFEIS, ANGÉLIQUE PICHON, SAMUEL ROUSSEAU, SAMON TAKAHASHI

Opening exhibition of the new gallery space at the School of Art of Riom. The exhibition offered an opening onto contemporary art by showcasing different techniques from artists of several generations.

La Chapelle – School of Art of Riom
Riom (63)
October 3, 2020 – January 3, 2021

Ce matin le soleil ne s’est pas levé (THIS MORNING THE SUN DID NOT RISE)

With: PIERRE BELOUIN, SAMUEL BUCKMAN, LAURA HABY, PATRICK DE KEYSER, NINO LAISNÉ, EDOUARD LEVÉ, CLAUDE LÉVÊQUE, VIRGINIE MARNAT, JULIEN PRÉVIEUX, ANRI SALA, and TOMI UNGERER

This exhibition was an attempt to understand a certain trajectory in contemporary art, one that foregrounds—at the aesthetic level—what must be called a series of depressive acts: expressions of states of depression, the encompassing boredom, immobility, communicational breakdowns, the loss of pleasure, the withdrawal of the capacity to remember, to project oneself, to dream, to desire, and to fantasize. These traits define not only the subjects (characters, individuals, artists, performers) staged in the artwork, but are also perceptible in the work’s formal structure—in the slowing down, in immobility, opacity, and repetition of the image—through which a loss of the sense of time and of connection to others comes to envelop the relationship between the viewer and the representation.

Galerie du Granit
Belfort (90)
January 14 – March 21, 2017

APPELS
(CALLS)

With: VINCENT BEAURIN, LUDMILLA CERVENY, FRANÇOIS GÉNOT, CORENTIN and JULIEN GROSSMANN

“Designing a first group exhibition the way I envisioned it was one of the most exciting experiences. I never managed to step away from my artist’s point of view, and it is this singular, sometimes ambiguous position of artist-curator that I fully embrace.” — Corentin Grossmann

Galerie du Granit
Belfort (90)
November 5 – December 17, 2016

Zones troubles
(TROUBLED ZONES)

With: KARMELO BERMEJO, ESTELLE FREDET, THOMAS MAILAENDER, MICHÈLE WAQUANT

The exhibition explores the troubled zones of our world and society through three major crises of the 21st century: immigration, ecology, and economy. The artists presented here address these three tragic aspects of our daily lives in poetic, ironic, or humorous forms. Their perspectives are never moralizing, nor do they pass judgment. Yet, there are clear positions within their works: Thomas Mailaender speaks of exile and return through a neon piece subverting safety signage codes, and through “portraits” — in the tradition of objective photography (Düsseldorf School) — of these “cathedral cars” that make their way “back home” for the summer. Estelle Fredet addresses the border that is permeable in one direction and impassable in the other, between Mexico and the United States. Karmelo Bermejo plays with the boundaries between economy and the economy of art through a video of fireworks set off for the closing of Art Basel Miami. Finally, Michèle Waquant unfolds an immense poetic frieze evoking all the research carried out by the artist for the making of a medium-length film entitled The Genius, the Bomb or the Moon, which was to be partially shot in the vicinity of the Paluel nuclear power plant.

École d’Art G. Jacot
Belfort (90)
April 26 – June 4, 2016

FGW

With: OLIVIER FILIPPI, KARLOS GIL, MICHÈLE WAQUANT

These three exhibitions brought together three artists: three practices, three generations, and three nationalities. Three artists weaving a transient link between abstraction and figuration, through a particular approach marked by minimal means and an economy of effects. The exhibitions offered themselves as moments of meditation and contemplation — slow and necessary in the face of the ultra-acceleration of information in the contemporary world.

Three universes also intertwined: the artificial, through Filippi’s abstract paintings and drawings — a self-contained world of color; the technological, with Karlos Gil’s works offering material solutions to immaterial needs; and nature, with Michèle Waquant tirelessly moving from landscape to landscape painting in her works.

Le 19, CRAC
Montbéliard (25)
March 6 – May 8, 2016

EXPOSITION FÉLINE
(FELINE EXHIBITION)

With: AUGUSTIN REBETEZ and NOÉ CAUDERAY

Augustin Rebetez was born in 1986 and lives and works in Mervelier, Switzerland. He is a photographer, draftsman, and creator of installations. A versatile artist, Rebetez is fast-paced and prolific in his work.

Noé Cauderay was born in 1981 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied at the Vevey School of Photography in Switzerland, where he met Augustin Rebetez. The two have collaborated on numerous projects.

Centre d’Art Contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
October 10 – December 24, 2015

Mutations – Mises en forme
(MUTATIONS – SHAPING FORMS)

With PABLO SIQUIER, MARIE VOIGNIER, and VASSILIS SALPISTIS
Co-curated with PHILIPPE CYROULNIK

The exhibition Mutations – Shaping Forms presents works that, through their specificities, question our relationship to reality and its representation. They explore the urban and cultural fields as well as the inherent concepts of space and time. This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the University of Franche-Comté (Arts and Culture Sciences Department) and Le 19, the Regional Contemporary Art Center of Montbéliard. The exhibition’s design was developed as part of a supervised project involving students from the Professional Bachelor’s degree in Exhibition Professions and Information Technologies at the University of Franche-Comté.

Pablo Siquier, a major figure in the Argentine and Latin American art scene, created at Le Gymnase a monumental black-and-white mural drawing over ten meters long. He draws elements from a formal vocabulary rooted in an urban reality marked by its dissolution through the widespread process of digitization. These elements, while not reproducing reality, incorporate it into compositions that seem to unfold between network and labyrinth, structure and chaos. In Pablo Siquier’s work, the ruins of modernist utopias are inscribed within the piece.

Marie Voignier is a French video artist already well recognized on the European scene, interested in the interaction between reality and fiction, history and myth. She enjoys tracing forgotten stories in atypical places.

Vassilis Salpistis, a painter of Greek origin working in Paris, has regularly ventured into video and sculpture and initiated collaborations with other artists.

Together with Marie Voignier, they present two works: One by One, a 15-minute essay film made in Athens exploring the notion of contemporary myth that mixes times and places, registers and references; and 19 Montages, a work made of rock and ceramic pieces proposing different stacking hypotheses to give other concrete forms to proposals found in a Goethe engraving, Rocky Chaos of Louisbourg dating from 1785. 19 Montages attempts to extract from Goethe’s Romantic gesture the power of imagination carried by drawing.

Through these works unfolds a reflection on time and its impact on forms.

Le Gymnase – Cultural Space
Besançon (25)
January 17 – March 15, 2015

Le dessin
(DRAWIng)

With ADEL ABDESSEMED, VIRGINIE BARRÉ, PIERRE BUDET, CAMILLE GIRARD and PAUL BRUNET, CORENTIN GROSSMANN, CÉDRIC GUILLERMO, JOACHIM MONVOISIN, ARNAUD ROCHARD, MARIE THEURIER, CHARLOTTE VITAIOLI.

In 2015, Art Chemin Faisant will explore a technique often said to be forgotten and lost, yet which is more alive than ever: drawing. The idea of integrating heritage and the architecture of the route into a contemporary experimental investigation of drawing are two essential elements of our artistic approach in selecting projects for Art Chemin Faisant.

Artists whose practice includes drawing will be exhibited. From minimalist drawing to digital drawing, as well as tattoo drawing and installation drawing, all facets of contemporary drawing will be explored…

Centre d’Art Contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
June 21 – September 20, 2015

COPLAS POPULARES – ¡GIRO FINAL!

A solo exhibition by NINA LAISNÉ

Through films, video installations, and photographs, Nina Laisné’s works offer a hybrid approach to cinematic language and traditional music. Both a musician and visual artist, she draws from the folk repertoire all the potential of fiction. Her images result from a meticulous aesthetic, always tinged with a certain strangeness. Children confronted with their own costumed images. Sung testimonies that remain anonymous. Suspended moments where connection is broken. A way of questioning narration, the rhythm of images, their tempo.

The video installation Esas lágrimas son pocas attempts to capture the still-existing link between traditional music and a new generation of children from Spanish-speaking families, while also participating in a broader research. Behind this casting device, Nina Laisné reveals the artificial staging of a film set, deconstructs the artifice of emotion, and plays with the spectator’s position. She enjoys creating intermediate situations where fiction and reality maintain a troubled relationship. A multi-voiced exhibition.

This exhibition resonates with the image/imatge art center in Orthez through Coplas populares — ¡Adentro!, presented from February 13 to May 2, 2015. It was realized in partnership with Chambre 415, the image/imatge Contemporary Art Center of Orthez (Béarn), and Casa Argentina de Paris.

Centre d’Art Contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
March 27 – May 24, 2015

Jeunes seigneurs
(YOUNG LORDS)

With: CATHY JARDON, HUGO SCHÜWER BOSS, CHRISTOPHE BAUDSON, AND THEIR GUESTS (JASON GUBBIOTTI, JANE HARRIS, CÉCILE MEYNIER).

This exhibition, titled after the eponymous song by the French punk band La Souris Déglinguée from 1987, presents a particular vision of painting today through three young artists chosen for their shared practices and the connections they have with each other: Hugo is friends with Cathy, Cathy knows Christophe well, and Hugo and Christophe are eager to meet. All are painters, and all attempt to address the timeless questions of painting.

Painters have always been the lords of art, and here we focus on showing an ultra-radical, though already surpassed, painting: geometric abstract painting, practiced by these three young artists. Around them, we will take stock of the crisis and renewal of painting, its death and eternal rebirth. In short, yet another painting exhibition!

Centre d’Art Contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
October 19 – December 28, 2014

Le rire, un parcours jaune
(LAUGHTER, A YELLOW PATH)

With: JULIEN BISMUTH, PAULINE BOUDRY AND RENATE LORENZ, JEAN-YVES BRÉLIVET, MARCEL BROODTHAERS, VINCENT CARLIER, CLAIRE DANTZER, JEAN-LOUIS COSTES, ERIC DUYCKAERTS AND JEAN-PIERRE KHAZEM, ANDRÉ FORTINO, BINÔME LAMBDA, LOUISE LAWLER, THIERRY LIÉGEOIS, JOACHIM MONVOISIN, GRÉGOIRE MOTTE, HERVÉ LE NOST, PRÉSENCE PANCHOUNETTE, JUSTINE PLUVINAGE, ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN, TAROOP & GLABEL, WINSHLUSS.

Co-curated with LÉO GUY-DENARCY.

On the occasion of the 16th edition of the L’Art chemin faisant parcours, we wanted to restage this strange epidemic of uncontrollable laughter across the Pays de Lorient territory. Indeed, while laughter is an overwhelming sound element with great potential, it is rarely present in museums and exhibitions. On this occasion, we take an epicenter, a flow, and a specific moment in time to convey its evolution through a yellow path. Similarly, the twenty artists participating in this journey become multiple vectors for its spread through various contagious visual forms.

If laughter is epizootic (contagious), it can also appear monstrous, sensational, and sometimes repulsive. Its collective apprehension is developed through discourse on hilarity and sometimes on humor. Its expansive power remains a mystery.

Centre d’Art Contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
June 22 – September 21, 2014

L’avant-garde est elle (toujours) bretonne?
(IS THE AVANT-GARDE (STILL) BRETON?)

With: VIRGINIE BARRÉ, JOCELYN COTTENCIN, ANTOINE DOROTTE, LAURENT DUTHION, JULIE C FORTIER, BENOÎT-MARIE MORICEAU, SAMIR MOUGAS, BRUNO PEINADO, LOÏC RAGUÉNÈS.

This exhibition took as its starting point the 1998 exhibition Is the Avant-Garde Breton? held at FRAC Bourgogne in Dijon, organized by Emmanuel Latreille, which featured nine artists then identified as the Breton Avant-Garde (Villéglé, Zérah, Mahé, Hains, Brelivet, Rivet, Tremorin, Le Bozec, Lemée). The aim here was not to reactivate that exhibition but rather to pay tribute to it and update it by attempting once again to answer the provocative question posed in the title. We presented (in a necessarily subjective and non-exhaustive way) a possible creation of an Avant-Garde in Brittany by exhibiting nine new-generation artists living and working in Brittany. These nine artists share a common focus on exploring the image and its possible modes of production in today’s society.

Centre d’art contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
January 10 – February 21, 2014

Monte le son 
(TURN UP THE VOLUME)

With: RÉMY JACQUIER, VASCO ARAUJO, VINCENT MENU, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, ERIC LA CASA & MICHAËLE ANDRÉA SCHATT, AGATHE PAMART, BLANDINE BRIÈRE, MATHIEU DESAILLY, JEAN-BAPTISTE MOREIRA BESSA, MAUDE MARCHAL, ADRIAN PIPER, DAVID RENAULT, AND STUDENTS FROM EESAB LORIENT AND ENSA NANTES.

An 8 km contemporary art trail through the natural and historic heritage of Pont-Scorff centered on the theme of sound in art.

Centre d’art contemporain du Pays de Lorient
Pont-Scorff (56)
June 22 – September 23, 2013

Exhibition Project FRENCH ALPS
for the Art Altitude collective at Les Arcs

The FRENCH ALPS exhibition project, created for the Art Altitude collective, showcased contemporary art and design works in the mountains for the first time, on the Arcs massif.

The exhibition program aimed to blend art and sport, nature and culture in a magnificent setting, presenting the mountain as an open-air museum.

Bourg Saint-Maurice – Les Arcs (73)
2009 – 2014

21000: 1st Biennial of Contemporary Art and Design of the City of Dijon

Featuring: Muriel Carpentier, Ange Lyne Janssen, Juliette Laval, Delphine Merle, Lilian Bourgeat, Vincent Carlier, Carlos Castillo, Grégoire Faugeras, Thomas Fontaine, Raphaël Galley, Christiane Geoffroy, Esther Hoareau, Olivier Lecreux, Fiona Lindron, Frédéric Lormeau, Isabelle Ménetrier, Ida Tursic & Wilfried Mille, Annelise Ragno, Loïc Raguénès, Pierre Ravelle-Chapuis, Jocelyn Saint-André, Frédéric Sanchez, Edwige Simonin, and Olivier Vadrot.

The first art and design biennial of the city of Dijon, presented as a walk through the city between private venues and public spaces.

Various locations
Dijon (21)
October 7 – October 13, 2010

SNAP!

Exhibition focused on the photographic practices of the Swiss artist Christian Marclay.

Co-curated by MAE Art and Exhibition Practices.

Galerie Art & Essai, University of Rennes 2
Rennes (35)
May 8 – June 17, 2008