d’Élisabeth Ballet — Tout En Un Plus Trois — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 21, 2017 → February 25, 2018

For the MAC VAL, the exhibition around Elisabeth Ballet’s work is the occasion to reconnect with monographic shows by dedicating the entirety of its 1,300 m2 space to this established French artist who had stayed away from the spotlights for a while.

“Tout En Un Plus Trois” offers a comprehensive look over more than 30 years of production. However, it is not entirely conceived as a retrospective show since each work, picked from one of the many artist’s series –all featured here- is reactivated for the occasion, reinvented, if not reinterpreted. Curator Frank Lamy rather calls it a “prospective retrospective”. The MAC VAL exhibition thus sheds light on Elisabeth Ballet’s work from the perspective of 2017, telling a story in present instead of past time.

Materials and forms build in, complete, repel, attract each other and invite visitors to wander through a big scenography playing with and turning into an architecture; where bodies interact with sculptures, artworks channel our attention, define spaces of protection, create perspectives, turn into sculptures, paths, hallways, and threshold; where sometimes words create artworks and artworks play on words. As always, Elisabeth Ballet scatters bits and pieces of her autobiography by unveiling a subtle opposition between public and private space, drawing the outline of a story.

Curator Frank Lamy assisted by Julien Blanpied