Opening: 23.10.2014 at 6 pm
With Pascal Convert, Michel François, Nicolas Kennett, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Till Roeskens
As part of a series of events on the theme On Destruction…, the Paris-Belleville School of Architecture is playing host to works from the Ile-de-France Regional Contemporary Art Collection [FRAC].
Focusing on the direct effects of destruction, Michel François offers us an archetype which crudely and literally tallies with the title: Trou, Briser… [Hole, Shatter…].
Coming straight from Verdun, Pascal Convert’s tree stumps work like “World War I veterans” (gueules cassées); saturated with ink like so much potential testimony to be written, their silent presence imposes itself, in a monumental way.
In a certain proximity, Nicolas Kennett’s Taupe [Mole] is a mummified form, vitrified by an obscure violence, like bodies caught in a deep sleep at Pompeii.
Closer to today, Till Roeskens’s video— Vidéocartographies : Aïda, Palestine—encompasses through narrative and drawing the strategies of adaptation to the transformation of the immediate landscape adopted by some refugees in a camp at Bethlehem.
Sublimating destruction, Gordon Matta-Clark films his cut-outs of architecture (Conical Intersect), and transforms what would otherwise be just broken walls into an aesthetic object, using the appearance of novel viewpoints.
Curated by: Jean-Luc Bichaud, teacher at the Paris-Belleville Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture.