National Art Center: Images and Publishing (cneai =)
Autumn scenario
September 29, 2012–February 8, 2013
An exhibition program in 10 points of view.
cneai =
Île des impressionnistes
78400 / Chatou
Apart from the actual transformation of the place, now staged, unified, flexible, renewed by Bona-Lemercier architects, Cneai invents a new pattern of cooperative programming. Research groups, in partnership with various art institutions, are generating seasonal exhibition programs made of 10 different “points of view.” This Autumn scenario is complemented and inaugurated by the Island Festival #1, a rendez-vous to see and hear contemporary culture, live.
Autumn scenario
Curators: Sylvie Boulanger, Benjamin Fély, Jing He, Francis Mary, Sébastien Pluot and Fabien Vallos
(1-island) Maison Flottante, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec
The autumn scenario starts with the Maison Flottante. A barge hosting authors, artists, writers, musicians, publishers and scholars residencies, allowing the guests to work on collective projects.
(2-island) Le musée de rue et Le musée iconostase + Architectures mobiles, Yona Friedman
Yona Friedman built two scale 1:1 models close to Cneai. Echoing these “iconostase museum” and “street museum,” an exhibition of models, drawings and films (from 1960 onwards) samples the recent donation made by the artist.
(3) Politique-fiction: le design au combat, Alexandra Midal
One often forgets that industrial design is born of political struggle. The movie relies on editing and collages to connect sources and borrowed material retracing the many relationships between design and politics.
(4) Publish or perish
Publishing is a matter of stocks long before being a matter of distribution or reading. Karl Holmqvist, Yann Sérandour, Rik Bas Backer are designing their own stocks as well as the publications by Continuous Project, Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer, Peter Downsbrough…
(5) Les occupantes, Christophe Lemaitre et Aurélien Mole
Drinking glasses created by the artists are used for various functions within the art center. Three of them were modified to become vases susceptible of being used to create Nageire style Ikebana compositions to be displayed inside the building.
(6) KOME, Jef Geys
KOME or Kunstwerken Op Meedere Examplaren, meaning “Artworks in several copies.” It’s the way Jef Geys is calling the works-multiples that he made during his entire life. KOME and other KEMPENS will be exhibited in their totality for the first time in France.
(7) Art By Telephone… Recalled
Art By Telephone… Recalled is an homage and a variation on the 1969 exhibition at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It will take place in 5 venues around the world: The Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, the San Francisco Art Institute, cneai =, Angers art school, CAPC / Bordeaux museum of contemporary art. With Arman, Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Sol LeWitt, Dennis Oppenheim and new projects by 36 artists.
(8) La connaissance des formes, Christophe Lemaitre
As a counterpoint to his Jan van Eyck go club in Maastricht, the exhibition will try to blend the practice of the go game with the artist’s work about the understanding of forms. A way to further the issues of perception and morphology inherent to the practice of go and their consequences on the artist’s practice and the research in aesthetics as a whole.
(9) Promenadologues #1
To detail, to select, to generate thinking out of a stroll, to enjoy the tiny detail and the free association of images, as well as the ideas that emerges when one meets the mundane, is putting ignorance at the same level of knowledge. The FMRA collection, in which you’re invited to lose yourself into a selection of items, is made of more than 11000 published works.
(10) Byron Bay, etc., Julien Carreyn
The Byron Bay images were made during a workshop with teenage patients from Montesson’s mental institution. Photographing these strange forms was like inventing walks in foreign, strange and primitive landscapes.
Director: Sylvie Boulanger