Loris Gréaud: Glorius Read. Sailore Drug

Dear Friend of Art,
The announcement of a sabbatical, a pilgrimage, a medical treatment, a long trip or a term of imprisonment would be wrongly addressed to you. But you will, I believe, take an interest in the time-out about which I would like to tell you here. In November 2016, I met Loris Gréaud for the first time. We soon came to an agreement concerning our joint hope to realize an exhibition which subjects to fundamental questioning everything that is connected with the idea of an (art) exhibition. Our discussions went back and forth, became bogged down only to subsequently pick up speed. It took me a while to understand that this artist is interested in a genuine exchange. Now after many concepts have been considered and rejected, with one having crystallized and convinced us of its novelty, things have become serious for me: effective immediately, I am ceasing to serve as curator for the planned exhibition and am instead myself becoming part of the work of art Glorius Read. Sailore Drug. Will I ever emerge from it? If so, in what condition? I certainly won’t be bored. Like the alien creature (physarum polycephalum) which I will be responsible for cultivating, I will grow with my many demanding tasks. My adventure is also accompanied by a general scientific interest. What does it mean for the often-cited triad of artist—work of art—viewer when the curator (as a privileged viewer) sets himself up inside the work according to the artist’s concepts, keeps it alive and is himself put on display?
See you soon in Darmstadt.
Yours, León Krempel

Loris Gréaud, one of the most internationally influential young artists of France, is realizing a solo exhibition in Germany for the first time. The project Glorius Read. Sailore Drug was developed for and in dialogue with the Kunsthalle Darmstadt. For almost two months, Loris Gréaud is transforming the Kunsthalle Darmstadt into a mystical intermediate space in which ghostly traces of peculiar life-forms may be observed here and there. The artist’s project expresses a sense of wonder about our world and what humans have created in it, but also about the gaps, the great unknowns in human existence.

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