Céline Condorelli: Two Years’ Vacation / Thomas Schmahl: Degrés Est

Céline Condorelli and the collections of the 3 FRAC of the Grand Est Region
Two Years’ Vacation
July 23, 2020–January 24, 2021

With works by Martin Beck, Ursula Biemann, Geta Brātescu, Brognon Rollin, Judy Chicago, Lynne Cohen, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Peter Downsbrough, Harun Farocki, Aurélien Froment, Luigi Ghirri, Karl Holmqvist, Marine Hugonnier, Teresa Margolles, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Camila Oliveira Fairclough, Cesare Petroiusti, Amalia Pica, Charlotte Posenenske, Lotty Rosenfeld, Martha Rosler, Cameron Rowland, Liv Schulman, Michael Snow, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Atelier Van Lieshout, Nil Yalter & Nicole Croiset.

Céline Condorelli’s ongoing concern for the concept of support has led her to develop a reflection on certain structures that shape public spaces: those that allow for the integration of culture into daily life, those that support works of art, or the bodies of those that come to look at them.

For her first solo exhibition in France, Condorelli (lives and works in London) makes use of emotional connections and affinities as a means of orientation within an institution. Interrogating her place in front of art collections, the artist chooses to look at them through the lens of affinity and labor—based on her observation that the artist’s labor becomes visible in the leisure time of the visitor, but also that affinities, like friendships, are tied to free time, and essential to the development of an artistic practice.

Céline Condorelli relates her work to a selection of pieces from the three collections, confronting shared pleasures, communal constraints, and individual physical reality. The show explores the infrastructural conditions of the ways we spend our time, in an era where labor, spaces of private life and free time are merging into a continuous productivity, between working at home and useful leisure. 

The exhibition is supported by Fluxus Art Projects.
The public conversation with Maurizio Lazzarato on September 10, 8:30pm, is part of Tools for Imagination an artwork by Condorelli produced by Ramdom (Italy) in collaboration with FRAC Lorraine, Metz (France); Tenerife Espacio de Las Artes, Tenerife (Spain); Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz (Poland); South London Gallery, London (UK) and MACRO, Rome (Italy). Supported by the Italian Council (8th edition 2020), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism
 

Degrés Est: Thomas Schmahl
July 23, 2020–January 24, 2021

Thomas Schmahl (born 1994 in Annecy, lives and works in Reims) graduated from the ESAD, Reims. Proposed by the director of Frac Champagne Ardenne for the Degrés Est series, Thomas Schmahl’s work highlights the anecdotal, the lacking, the unstable. The artist devises situations and installations in which the story and the protagonists often find themselves in an elsewhere.

Conceived for Degrés Est, L’aire Mirabelle reflects the reality of a highway rest-stop’s bathrooms. Inviting the visitor to enter into the fragile but viable structure, the artist stages an action which is not strictly situated. Instead, it could unfold either here or elsewhere, and asks us what happens when we are forced to slow down. Akin to a theatre set or a “sketch of the space” in 3D, the installation also contains sculptures representing automobile motor-oil gauges, instruments for measuring time.

In its rough transcription of cramped space opposite the immensity of the highway, L’aire Mirabelle offers the possible experience of a place within a place, playing between inside and outside, in the path of a permanent draft of air.

For the occasion, Thomas Schmahl also produced a limited edition vinyl record, Les bandes blanches (The White Stripes). For his sound performance on September 11, 8:30pm he will play these airs of the highway that bring together stretched landscapes and pop songs.

Director: Fanny Gonella
Curator: Agnès Violeau
Public Programm: Chéryl Gréciet