Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann
La Politesse de Wassermann
June 25–September 3, 2017
Opening: June 24
Finissage: September 3
Maison Louis Carré
2 chemin du Saint-Sacrement
78490 Bazoches-sur-Guyonne
France
T +33 (0)1 34 86 79 63
www.maisonlouiscarre.fr
www.lab-bel.com
www.galerieallen.com
Curated by Laurent Fiévet & Silvia Guerra
La Politesse de Wassermann is a project by Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann for Maison Louis Carré by Alvar Aalto. The title is borrowed from The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard. Constructed in a fragmentary manner it is also a waking dream disguised as a nightmare. Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann has created her own narrative for Maison Louis Carré, the home that gallery owner and collector Louis Carré commissioned for his wife Olga Carré. It’s a space in which the private and professional lives of its owner fused, from working sessions with Jean Cocteau to chess matches with Marcel Duchamp. The friendship that drew the Carrés to Alvar Aalto and his wife and collaborator Elissa Aalto allowed them to work together on the creation of a space intended as a work of total architecture and design, suited for generating an incomparable energy during regular garden parties and receptions. Even today the house still maintains traces of this former life: furniture, clothes, books, crockery, flasks of perfume, and so on. What is missing, however, is the Carrés’ collection, works of art that formed an essential part of the architectural conception. Yet, every now and then, it seems possible to enter the social, cultural and artistic life of the 20th century, a little like in Ballard, where the puzzle is constructed through different sub-chapters. Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann will also piece together an oeuvre through the collection of new pieces conceived in situ. Highlighting the lost symmetries of modernism and echoing the presence of the women who were the driving forces behind Aalto and Carré, the artist invokes a space peopled with ghosts and desires, to welcome 21st century visitors, haunted and confused in their turn by the poetry and memory of the space. Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann draws inspiration freely from Aalto’s modern architecture, literary influences—ranging from Bataille’s Story of the Eye to Paul B. Preciado’s Pornotopia, as well as J.G. Ballard, to name just a few—and from where the deviant bourgeoisie of Luis Buñuel produces a background for an exhibition of multiple reproductions in which the conceptual is not purely referential, but also articulates the physicality of a contemporary surrealism.
Silvia Guerra, co-curator
Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann
The sculptural, photographic, film and performance works of Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann employ narratological methodologies that suspend linear chronologies and open up new fictional possibilities in the now. Her works weave together both historical and fictive trajectories of people, places and objects, freely blending the influences of literature, cinema and design. Her practice is both referentially and materially rich with leanings towards a modernist aesthetic that permeate the artist’s work, without necessarily becoming its subject.
She lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Nationale Superieure d’Arts of Paris Cergy in 2006, she is the current recipient of the AWARE Prize 2017 (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions). She participated in a residency program at Le Pavilion/Palais de Tokyo in 2011–12, and was also the recipient of a research residency at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan in 2016. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and collective exhibitions internationally including FUTURA (Czech Republic); Syntax Project (Portugal); Centre Pompidou Metz (France); Hepworth Wakefield (UK); FORUM and @KCUA gallery (Japan); Passerelle CAC (France), Palais de Tokyo and MAMVP (France); La Galerie (France); MRAC (France); VIA FARINI (Italy); IAC (France); MMSU (Croatia).
Maison Louis Carré
Designed by Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) for the art dealer and collector Louis Carré (1897–1977), this house is the only building by the Finnish architect in France. It was completed in 1959.
The Maison Louis Carré has been the property of the Association Alvar Aalto in France since 2006 and is directed by Ásdís Ólafsdóttir.
Lab’Bel
The Artistic Laboratory of the Bel Group was created in spring 2010 with the aim of supporting contemporary art. Since its creation Lab’Bel has built up a collection of artworks created from 2000 onwards, and every year puts in place a series of exhibitions and artistic events both in France and in Europe.
Lab’Bel is directed by Laurent Fiévet and Silvia Guerra, co-curators of the in situ series devoted to modernist architecture and contemporary art.
The project was also made possible by the support of: Galerie Allen, Vitra, Artek, The Community, Anna Ruohonen Paris, Kali Vermès.
Hours: March–November, Saturday–Sunday 2–6pm, by reservation
Reservations: resa [at] maisonlouiscarre.fr
Press contact: www.fouchardfilippi.com
