February 2–May 14, 2023
The Centre culturel suisse in Paris is currently undergoing renovation work until 2024 and is presenting an On Tour programme throughout France, with a stop in Rennes from May 5–14, 2023. On this occasion, Centre culturel suisse is partnering up with 40mcube, La Criée centre d’art contemporain and Frac Bretagne around three exhibitions starting on February 2 and 3, 2023.
Judith Kakon, Grand Air
February 4–May 14, 2023
Opening: February 3
La Criée centre d’art contemporain
La Criée centre d’art contemporain presents Judith Kakon’s first solo exhibition in France. In the wake of the holiday season Judith Kakon is showing part of the City of Rennes’ Christmas illuminations. The decorations are being displayed dormant, that is to say switched off and laid out. Removed from their habitual context and metamorphosed in terms of form and function, these samples of urban heritage are seen in a new light by visitors. Judith Kakon’s project resonates doubly in the present context: at a time of energy restrictions the dormant lights of this use/re‑use of local resources shine with a powerful symbolic charge.
Curators: Claire Hoffmann & Sophie Kaplan
Basim Magdy, The Year Spring Arrived in September
February 3–May 14, 2023
Opening: February 2
Frac Bretagne
Basim Magdy’s solo exhibition at the Frac Bretagne is a dive into the work of this fascinating artist of Egyptian origin. In his work, the image is considered in an expanded field that unfolds to observe what surrounds him and create parallel realities somewhere between embodied study and critical sublimation. In his paintings, photographs and films, the artist composes from samples of the world. As he wanders, he extracts images, gleans fragments, shapes them, twists them. Like a scientist, he tries experiments with reality to generate secondary realities. Throughout his work, he exposes very complex and convoluted constellations of contemporary social and political power structures, and the ways in which they might bring an end to the world. The dramatic tension of Basim Magdy’s critical fictions is thus based on existing realities and rests on counter-narrative plots, written by the artist and played out against the background of the absurdity of life and the banality of existence.
Curator: Etienne Bernard
Romane de Watteville, Studiolove
February 4– May 13, 2023
Opening: February 3
40mcube
For her first solo show in a french institution, Romane de Watteville presents at 40mcube centre for contemporary art her paintings by combining different formats and interventions on the exhibition space. Her new works, created on this occasion, are conceived with the will to create a dialogue, a complementarity, and a plurality of points of view, allowing her to recreate on an architectural scale the process developed in her paintings. The title of the exhibition, Studiolove, evokes the cabinet of curiosities and more particularly the Studiolo and the Grotta of Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance collector. Between the studio, the private and even intimate space, and the exhibition space, the exhibition is thought here as a hybrid place.
Curator: Anne Langlois
