Ailleurs — Somewhere Else — Espace culturel Louis Vuitton — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 11 → May 8, 2011

For its 14th exhibition, the Espace culturel Louis Vuitton is offering a new variation on the theme of travel and choosing to reveal the “Somewhere Else” of eighteen so-called “expeditionist” artists. The expedition becomes an artistic endeavour…

A growing number of artists are choosing this framework: relocating creation in order to define it differently, setting out, installing the work of art or producing it outside of its conventional environment.

The nature of the expedition to which these artists devote themselves may vary widely. In this movement, in this encounter with new spaces and other humans — sometimes distant, sometimes near, but always “other” — the artist finds the opportunity for a singular creation that is primarily characterised by its offset nature.

Somewhere Else will open symbolically with the tragic example of Bas Jan Ader, who set sail in 1975 to cross the Atlantic on an unsuitable boat, at the cost of his life, and with the iconic example of Giovanni Anselmo, who climbed Stromboli in an expression of contact with the infinite. It will also pay tribute to the artistic work — pioneering in the genre — of Paul Gauguin in the Pacific. This foundational experience emphasises the poetic necessity of leaving: it seems that authentic art can only exist and blossom “somewhere else”.

The geographical elsewhere is explored by a number of the artists in the exhibition: Joanna Malinowska travels the farthest, in the hostile Arctic regions. Laurent Tixador and Abraham Poincheval try out an underground elsewhere during an unprecedented mobile troglodytic adventure. Fernando Prats captures the traces of a volcanic eruption. Fabrice Langlade plans to install a porcelain bridge on the Mongolian steppe. Luc Mattenberger seems to have taken hold of the moon, while Laurent Mulot designs phantom art centres in unusual locations.

The search for the Other, in its need for interaction, drives the work of Yann Dumoget, along with that of Marc Horowitz, in an idiosyncratic and jubilant register. Lucy and Jorge Orta demonstrate a strong commitment to the abolition of nationalities. The expedition also takes the form of the memory of a distant experience, like that undertaken by Tïa-Calli Borlase. For Olivier Leroi and for Alix Delmas, the somewhere else is not only geographical but also contextual. Some people expect information about the state of the world from the expedition, while others view it as a test, and others still an adventure. To the point of reaching, like Andreas Angelidakis, the ultimate form of creation: setting off to explore virtual worlds generated by the digital civilisation.