Étienne Chambaud : Nœuds Négatifs (Negative Knots)

From June 7 to August 26, 2018, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse is hosting a solo exhibition dedicated to the French artist Étienne Chambaud. For this project, the artist builds a display that knots the ruins of a zoo cage and a series of objects, sculptures, collages, paintings and video.

Negative Knots is a quasi-fractal exhibition. It is composed of several strata of exhibitions that share the same space or compete for it. Neither a simple sum nor a subtraction of one by the other, they suggest a more complex combination which does not reveal itself a priori. They act as many parallel dimensions, sometimes facing one another, sometimes overlapping or coinciding, creating a common space or conversely mutually excluding one another and coexisting without any shared boundaries.

Étienne Chambaud’s work could be described as an “ecology of separations”: an on-going research on frontiers and borders between forms, objects, gestures and discourses. In his work, various spaces, scientific fields, modes of capture, of conservation and of transmission merge, overlap or intersect.

Étienne Chambaud has presented solo exhibitions such as INCOMPLT (2016), The Naked Parrot (2013) and On Hospitality (2010) at LABOR, Mexico City, Undercuts at Forde, Geneva (2012), O-RA-LI-TÉ (2011) at Bugada&Cargnel, Paris, Le Musée Décapité (2010) at Sies+Höke, Düsseldorf, Contre-Histoire de la Séparation (2010) at CIAP, Vassivière and the three-part exhibition The Sirens’ Stage (David Roberts Art Foundation, London), Le Stade des Sirènes (Kadist Art Foundation, Paris), and Lo stato delle sirene (Nomas Foundation, Rome), all 2010.

His works have been featured in many group exhibitions including at Centre Pompidou, Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; MACBA, Barcelona; Whitechapel Gallery, London; MAMM, Medellin; MOCA, Detroit; MMOMA, Moscow; and in several galleries such as Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Fluxia, Milan; or Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York.

A proposition by Sandrine Wymann

During Art Basel: Reception at La Kunsthalle, Friday, June 15 from 7–10pm

(Shuttle from Basel to Mulhouse: Departure at 6:15pm. Corner Isteinerstrasse–Bleicherstrasse. Return to Basel at 9:15pm)

Special hours 

Late-night opening Thursdays until 8pm, in June

During Art Basel Week: June 12 to 15, Tuesday–Friday 10am to 6pm, late-night opening on Thursday until 8pm and Friday until 10pm.

Closed Mondays, Tuesdays and August 15

Free admission

Enquiries/Press office
Clarisse Schwarb
Clarisse.schwarb@mulhouse.fr