Suzanne Lafont
Situations
6 February–26 April 2015
Carré d’Art–Musée d’art contemporain
Place de la Maison Carrée
30000 Nîmes
France
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
T + 33 (0) 4 66 76 35 70
F + 33 (0) 4 66 76 35 85
Suzanne Lafont (born 1949) is a major figure on the French art scene. Her work came to the fore in the 1990s. She had a solo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume and exhibited at MoMA (New York) in 1992, and then at Documenta IX (1992) and X (1997). Her work is an extended practice of photography which incorporates references to theatre, performance, cinema and literature.
The exhibition at Carré d’Art offers a perspective on her most recent works, most of them made specially for the event, but drawing on the photographs she has taken since 1995. These provide the raw material for each proposition, allowing her explore different regimes of images in a series of situations.
By way of introduction, 468 of these data are organised in the form of a slide show (Index). The exhibition then develops around the figure of the actor/performer. This protagonist first activates the space around the viewer, then, with Situation Comedy, from General Idea’s Pamphlet Manipulating the Self, it takes over the field of the book, before giving way to it entirely (The First Two Hundred Fifty Five Pages of Project on the City 2, Guide to Shopping). Finally, it reappears in the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Mystery of Marie Roget.
The exhibition ends with an announcement concerning coming talks (On annonce une série de conférences) which, given the absence of informative content, restores the literality of the museum.
Curator: Jean-Marc Prevost
