Olivier Bardin
What’s on view looks like you
Last exhibition: 10 July 2007
Curator : Chiara Parisi
Centre international d’art et du paysage Ile de Vassivière
F – 87120
tel : ( 33) 05 55 69 27 27
fax : ( 33) 05 55 69 29 31
communication [at] ciapiledevassiviere.com
In his work, French artist Olivier Bardin uses the exhibition as a medium. Olivier Bardin is known for the exhibitions he has staged, or that he has curated, and for the television programs he has conceived. Using the voice and the image, Olivier Bardin questions the ways identities get constructed through the representations that each makes of him or herself and of others. The image, that of the person, is always at the center of his exhibitions. Real time, short time, the choice of a place, the circulation of the image, and the absence of scenarios are some of the key triggers to the relationships between individuals that Olivier Bardin stages.
What’s on view looks like you is the title of a series of four exhibitions staged by Olivier Bardin throughout 2007 at the Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’ile de Vassivière. Every exhibition, which lasts for two hours, takes place in the completely vacant spaces of the museum, and involves a group of no more than twenty viewers each time. The audience is asked one question only: who among you wishes to exhibit him or herself? As soon as a viewer volunteers, the exhibition begins. Originating from a community of viewers, the person who decides to be on view excludes him or herself from the group. The viewers then move away from him/her and watch. After a long silence, like in a museum, the viewers start a discussion with the one who is on view. Through the course of the discussion, which revolves around the responsibility of the viewer’s gaze, the person who became the subject of the exhibition returns to his original community. These four exhibitions in Vassivière will be documented in a new publication.
