The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue / Degrés Est: Emma Perrochon

The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue
February 14–May 10, 2020 

Alexandra Bircken, Sara Deraedt, Gaylen Gerber, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Christina Ramberg, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Terre Thaemlitz, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Kathleen White

“Containing, restraining, reforming, hurting, compressing, binding, transforming a lumpy shape into a clean smooth line” is how the American artist Christina Ramberg (1946–1995) once described the drawings of corsets in her sketchbooks. Ramberg was one of the most intriguing painters to emerge within a generation of Chicago Imagists. Operating under the influences of Surrealism, she painted sharply delineated, truncated torsos, bound in bizarre variations of corsets, bandages, and textures. The paintings exude an unnerving calm burdened with conflicting desires.

The core of the exhibition is a selection of Ramberg’s paintings and drawings, which dialogue with a variety of artistic approaches, shedding light on the artist’s understanding of the body as an entity embedded in its environment, molded by corsets, hairdos, and behavioral conventions. Together, these works challenge both the internalized and external structures that shape our existence; they further articulate a relationship of interdependence between norms applied to constructs, infrastructures, identity and desire.

The exhibition was conceived by co-curator Anna Gritz. It is produced by KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, in cooperation with 49 Nord 6 Est—Frac Lorraine and BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK.

The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue is made possible through the support from the Capital Cultural Fund and Terra Foundation for American Art.

Degrés Est: Emma Perrochon
February 14–May 10, 2020 

The work of Emma Perrochon (born in 1987 in Auxerre; lives and works in Nancy) is rooted in her knowledge of materials, their histories, characteristics, and requirements. Drawing on artisanal techniques, she explores the uses and contexts traditionally associated with specific raw materials, as well as the images they evoke, which are superposed on those before our eyes.

Whatever the forms she produces, the artist, who is a graduate of the Dijon School of Fine Arts, speaks of her artistic practice as the labor of a sculptor. Her techniques and gestures are not only the means of carrying out a project but are also bearers of meanings and reveal gaps in temporality or materials that are juxtaposed to tell intersecting stories.

Perrochon’s installation for Degrés Est materializes one of the many, often unsettling intersections to be discovered in public space. Playing on the contrast between the fragility of human presence and the solidity of urban furniture, Emma Perrochon lends form to power relations between the materials and their assigned colors.

Degrés Est is part of a series of events organized in collaboration with FRAC Alsace and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, focusing on artists with ties to the Grand Est region. 

Program of events

Shared Perspectives
Thursday, March 5 at 7pm
Exhibition tour with Felizitas Diering, Marie Griffay, and Fanny Gonella, directors of the three FRACs of the Grand Est

Film screening
Saturday, March 14, at 5pm
Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists, 2015 (106‘, English with French subtitles)
Documentary film by Leslie Buchbinder

Screening
Sunday, March 15, at 5pm
Terre Thaemlitz, Soulnessless : Cantos I–IV, 2012 (80‘38”, in French)

Concert
Wednesday, March 26, at 10pm30
Leonie Pernet (Electro-pop, France). As part of the Subversive Film Festival

Screenings and workshops
Thursday, April 29, from 8pm
Bondage and other small lessons
With Mistress M., dominatrix, sex educator, and militant & the Atelier BDSM, a queer ethical space and artisanal leather BDSM accessories manufacturer

Film screening
Wednesday, May 6, at 8pm
Horse Being, 2015 (63’, in French)
Documentary film by Jérôme Clément-Wilz

Pole Synthesiser Performance
Wednesday, May 6, at 10pm
Kolbeinn Hugi & FRZNTE