21 x 29,7 — Exposition collective — De Roussan Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 13 → November 3, 2012

For September 2012, Galerie de Roussan, Jean-Jacques Lebel and Nabila Mokrani have invited more than 40 artists to create or show a small artwork — all media, concepts and generations included.

In line with the history of the revolutionary district of Belleville, the gallery has asked the artists to reflect upon and work on the idea of revolutions: in historic terms, of course, but also in spatial, conceptual or ideological terms… Videos, collages, photography, paintings, sound installations, sculptures, poems and graphic scores will invade the white walls of the gallery — which is also having its own revolution in exhibiting so many artists in such a small space.

Galerie de Roussan : We wanted to invite an artist to be curator of this exhibition and we found the idea of inviting Jean-Jacques Lebel very exciting. Whereas young galleries usually work with young artists and curators, we wanted to show that there is no age at which to “revolt”. Combining young directors of a gallery, a young curator and an internationally renowned artist, the idea of the exhibition is above all to share diverse individual sensibilities, all presented across one single format, and which together will produce an as-yet-unknown energy. In addition, when Jean Jacques Lebel told us there used to have a brothel on the same street as the gallery, we decided to exhibit all the artworks in a joyful kind of “bordel”.

When I learned that Revolutions were one of the inspirations for this exhibition it felt really right because it is exactly in this neighborhood that the “barricadiers” of Paris’ Commune made their stand — so it was a good opportunity to pay tribute to them.

Jean Jacques Lebel

There are currents that accompany us, that touch us. There are detours that suit us, yet frustrate us. There are various paths that retrace the space. There are windows that open and that close minds. There are moving waves that make us paralyzed. There are trips without process. Wonderful shelves, displayed without hierarchy. It is a great journey, a labyrinthine crossing, but all in the same place, at the Galerie de Roussan.

Nabila Mokrani

Galerie de Roussan’s directors asked me and my friend Nabila Mokrani to join them in choosing different artists to invite for a group show with only small pieces. This makes sense because SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL. I like the idea. Nothing better than a mix of genres, techniques, and generations in order to create an ephemeral and multifaceted tribe — a kind of Polyphonix and “ collectively organised expression” — as Felix Guattari would say,the great ‘communard’ who is still in our hearts and minds.

Jean Jacques Lebel

On the occasion of the Belleville biennale, Galerie de Roussan proposes a revolutionary group show! Acting both as plinths and as a visual scenography, the shelves will physically and conceptually determine the space. The small pieces, disparately arranged, will free the artwork from any complexes of representation. And so, let us dream…