Montag ou la bibliothèque à venir / KVM — Ju Hyun Lee & Ludovic Burel: Coréaniser Corbu

There is a blurring of borders in the two new exhibitions showing at the Frac Franche-Comté. First the borders between art and literature with the exhibition Montag ou la bibliothèque à venir (Montag or the library-in-the-making); then the boundaries between art, craft and design with the Coréaniser Corbu (To Koreanize Corbu) show by KVM artists Ju Hyun Lee & Ludovic Burel.

Montag or the library-in-the-making
Ignasi Aballí, Francesco Arena, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Dora Garcia, Mark Geffriaud, Rodney Graham, Camille Henrot, Claire Fontaine, Gary Hill, David Lamelas, Jorge Méndez Blake, Jean-Christophe Norman, Claudio Parmiggiani, Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza, Katie Paterson, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Özlem Sulak, The Book Lovers (David Maroto et Joanna Zielinska), Thu Van Tran, Oriol Vilanova
Curator: Patrice Joly

Montag or the library-in-the-making explores the links between literature and the visual arts, reflecting artists’ unflagging interest in the literary medium. It brings together some 30 works on the subject, either in the form of adaptations of famous texts via the visual arts (sculpture, videos, installation, design, etc.) in particular, or by directly reworking the textual matter, subjecting it to a host of transformations, new twists, recoups and other “affronts.” A final section is devoted more specifically to libraries, as well as to books, which are regularly the targets of censorship in repressive political regimes; in view of such violations book production has become stronger than ever among artists for whom literature remains an unrivalled field of experimentation and who are highly instrumental in its revival.

The number of artistic works that reflect this tendency more or less directly has grown steadily over the last 30 years, and exhibitions linked to literature have continued to flourish. Great 20th century narratives such as Joyce’s Ulysses or Conrad’s Heart of Darkness have become key references for many artists who constantly revisit them and draw inspiration from them, as in The Joycean Society by Dora Garcia or Thu Van Tran’s successive takes on Conrad’s odyssey. Yet this literary classics approach should not mask the references to lesser-known or less consensual authors as exemplified in Lili Reynaud-Dewar’s use of excerpts drawing upon writings by Guy Hocquenghem, Tim Dean, Lee Edelman or Ann Rower, concerned with more contemporary issues.

Is literature just another raw material for artists? Montag attempts to draw up a non-exhaustive inventory of the ways that artists take hold of seminal texts in order to translate them into their language, thereby reflecting a clear will to “adapt.” The book, an object not long ago believed doomed to die out, has become the subject of all kinds of artistic experimentation, in terms of both its form and content. A symbol of resistance to the ever-increasing pace of our lives, books are also a universal symbol of resistance to opposition: Özlem Sulak’s offering is there to remind us that books are one of the first victims of repressive political regimes. It is also for this reason that Montag ends with an ode to the constant renewal of literature in the form of the collection The Book Lovers, a “collection-in-progress” that brings together over 400 works of fiction written by artists.

To Koreanize Corbu
KVM — Ju Hyun Lee & Ludovic Burel
Curator: Fabien Pinaroli

At the invitation of the Frac Franche-Comté, “le 19, CRAC” (regional centre for contemporary art) in Montbéliard is hosting an extended run of its group exhibition indexmakers by presenting an installation and performance by the KVM duo Ju Hyun Lee & Ludovic Burel. To Koreanize Corbu consists of a set of 12 chairs created using Le Corbusier’s “Modulor” proportions combined with a soundtrack, the Korean Electric Poem, produced in collaboration with Géry Petit. Interested in post-colonial issues since the duo’s formation in 2012, the KVM questions the relationship between centre and periphery. This is a question that Jacques Soulillou sums up as follows in his book on ornament and war (Le Livre de l’ornement et de la guerre): “Centre: major arts, man, white, façade, decor… Periphery: minor arts, woman, colour, wild, pattern, ambiance…”

The KVM has ornamented, indigenised and “Koreanized” these chairs by adding foam covered in madae, synthetic hessian jute cloth, a colourful material used for wrapping foodstuffs on traditional Korean markets. The muted, episodical tones of the soundtrack appears to “coat” the whole installation. With a touch of aesthetic reverse engineering, To Koreanize Corbu reverses the process of the Western “modernization” of Asia, by reviving Korean folk art, soberly ornamental and functional.

Frac Franche-Comté
The Frac Franche-Comté Regional Collection of Contemporary Art is one of the 23 Frac created in 1982 to disseminate contemporary art within each region of France. The Frac have three complementary missions: to collect the art of our times, to take it out into the public, and to educate people about art. The Frac Franche-Comté builds and manages a public collection of contemporary art assembling 648 works by 327 artists. Since 2006 the collection has focused on works investigating the broad question of time, this issue being a perennial theme in art history, as well as a topical concern, rooted in the region’s history. Since 2011, within this collection of works exploring the notion of time, the Frac has sought to develop an area devoted to so-called “sound” works.

Press contact: Domna Kossyfidou, domna.kossyfidou [​at​] frac-franche-comte.fr / Leïla Neirijnck, leila [​at​] alambret.com