Biennale de Belleville 2 — Event — Slash Paris

Past: September 15 → October 20, 2012

Biennale de Belleville — La belle histoire Du 15 septembre au 20 octobre, la biennale de Belleville organise sa seconde édition. Expositions, projets in situ, ateliers d’artistes, tour d’horizon d’un événement ancré dans l’histoire.

The 2nd Belleville Biennale will be held from 15 September to 20 October next, occupying the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin, the CENTQUATRE, various association premises, and artists’ studios, as well as public places. For just over a month, this multicultural neighbourhood will again become an arena for artistic experiments, with an eye on the national and international scene, through exhibitions and shows, artists’ interventions, and novel projects.

Sam Durant, Question Intervention, 2005 Peinture en spray sur miroir — 120 × 240 cm Collection privée

Exhibitions

Answering a proposal made by Patrice Joly and Aude Launay, the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin will house a show on the theme of Revolutions (political, artistic, urban, architectural…), bringing together works by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Sam Durant, Claire Fontaine, Julien Nédélec, Blaise Parmentier, Alexandre Périgot, Hugo Pernet…

Alexandre Périgot, Jardin révolutionnaire avec moins de couleurs et plus de fleurs (détail), 2010 De fleurs (détail), 2010. Collection du Frac des Pays de la Loire — Courtesy galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris

A series of shows around this theme will also be held at the Treize, a new venue encompassing curator associations in the former Vitrine on Rue Moret, and at Shanaynay, a new place for young artists on Rue des Amandiers.

Interventions in public places

Street Painting 2

Curated by Aude Launay

Davide Balula, Buried Painting (Bielefeld), 2010 Particules de terre — 150 × 195 cm Courtesy de l’artiste & galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris — Collection Sanofi.

Carrying on the experiment conducted during the first Biennale with Street Painting, Street Painting 2 proposes comparing reflection about the pictorial medium, often confined to the studio and limited to the canvas’s surface, with the “outside” world. The urban space becomes an exhibition space with passers-by and neighbourhood residents forming the public. For a day’s span, ten or so French and international artists will occupy the streets of Belleville to re-enact the revolutions that have punctuated the history of this art. With Erwan Ballan, Davide Balula, Martin Barré, Cécile Bart, Nikolas Gambaroff (to be confirmed), Wojciech Gilewicz, Tobias Madison, Aldric Mathieu, Guillaume Pellay and Elodie Seguin.

To be discovered on 22 September

The Night of Tableaux Vivants II

Curated by Christian Bernard, Mamco director (Museum of modern and contemporary art in Geneva) and Jean-Max Colard

Mathilde Veyrunes, Les Illustres, 2012 Sculpture vivante in situ (modèle vivant, rideau de scène, embrasses)

In different forms (performances, videos, photographs), a dozen “living pictures” will fill the streets of Belleville. In her videos, the artist Pauline Curnier Jardin unearths such figures as Bernadette Soubirou and Joan of Arc to offer them another life. This proposition is the second episode of a project presented at the Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse in 2011.

Night of 22 September

Nicolas Milhé, Untitled

Curated by Anne Langlois and Patrice Goasduff / 40mcube, Rennes

Nicolas Milhé, Sans titre, 2005 Béton armé — 600 × 300 × 250 cm Production 40mcube, Rennes — Courtesy galerie Samy Abraham & galerie Mélanie Rio.

A ready-made sculpture by the artist Nicolas Milhé, a prefabricated element used in particular for building separation walls between two territories, fast and without foundations, is being shown Place of the Colonel Fabien. This work, produced in Rennes in 2005, and acquired by the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), is re-contextualized at the junction between the Chinese, Arab, Jewish and Pakistani neighbourhoods in Belleville.

Vincent Lamouroux at the Buttes-Chaumont

Vincent Lamouroux, Aire 23, 2010 Chaux inerte projetée — Dimensions variables Le Vent des Forêts, Meuse, France — Courtesy de l’artiste

Vincent Lamouroux transforms the landscape of the Buttes-Chaumont park by covering one of its clumps with a white substance, thus giving it a ghostly look inviting us to daydream. Thus metamorphosed, the chosen trees appear as if snow-covered, from summer’s end on. Mixing sham chalk, rye flour and sugar, the white layer gradually blurs with the wind and rain, and disappears in about two months.

The “rediscovery” of the statue of Jean-Jules Pendariès in front of the Maison des métallos — Thinking Work and Working Thought

Jean-Jules Pendariès, Le Répit du travailleur, 1903 Marbre, H 210 cm ; L 140 cm ; P 120 cm, 2 tonnes Statue, Ville de Paris, acquise au Salon de 1907 Avec l’aimable courtoisie du Centre de documentation de la Conservation des œuvres d’art religieuses et civiles de la Ville de Paris.

This year the Belleville Biennale is broading its perimeter. An art lending library is being set up in the heart of the CENTQUATRE with a loans system on the esplanade. This idea, brainchild of Gilles Baume, consists in re-thinking the transmission of works of art in a neighbourhood which does not have such habits, as well as promoting this practice in intra muros Paris. The designer Stéphane Barbier Bouvet has devised an attractive display and a siting of the works. The collection has been put together with the help of Belleville’s galleries with a possible view to the works on loan being purchased (works with a commercial value of less than 1,000 euros).

Opening on 26 September

Le Grand Tour — occupation of artists’ studios

Answering a proposal by Claire Moulène, studios of artists like Camille Henrot, Philippe Quesne, Bernhard Rüdiger, Raphaël Siboni and Virginie Yassef are registered in the Biennale’s circuit, becoming the setting for specific works. With their modest and reactive formats, these temporary projects are the result of a game of invitations. In Olivier Dollinger’s studio, for example, the project Circles stories will stage and link a Marcel Duchamp roto-relief, the exhibition curator Mathilde Villeneuve, the art historian and critic Barnard Marcadé, and the eurhythmics champion, Claire Zeller. This project also enables us to discover, on 22 September, a novel installation by the artist Mathias Kiss in the AIR group’s studio.

And as ever…

The Biennale newspaper

As in the first Biennale, a newspaper is being published. Serving at once as a map of the venues and a schedule of goings-on, as well as a compilation of curators’ writings and interviews with artists, this is your indispensable guide, distributed all over Paris.

Exhibitions in Belleville’s galleries, to be visited during the Biennale

Belleville’s galleries are important visits to be made. Some of their artists are naturally associated in Biennale projects, like Alexandre Périgot, represented by the Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, in the show at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin; Jonathan Binet, represented by the Galerie Gaudel de Stampa, and Elodie Seguin, represented by the Galerie Jocelyn Wolff in Street Painting 2; Charlotte Moth, represented by the Galerie Marcelle Alix in Caroline Hancock’s project, and Nicolas Milhé represented by the Galerie Samy Abraham, presenting a sculpture in a public place.