Hit & Run — carte blanche à Stéphane Bérard — Eva Meyer Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 5, 2011 → January 7, 2012

Hit-and-Run, this expression can mean either a blitz or a traffic accident in which the driver leaves the scene. The two definitions are therefore distinctly different: the first involves conscious, offensive preparation whose aim is to conquer or destroy, the second an (immediate) defense reaction that is more like a frantic flight.

The artists are invited to focus on one or the other of these contrasting meanings — even to create a dialectic between them — by using the gallery’s space — and can work alternately (or not) for nine and a half weeks, from November 5 to January 14, 2012.

The idea is that practices and forms be thought out in terms of tactics — a priori (which describes the blitz meaning) or a posteriori since leaving the scene of an accident is an afterthought rather than an anticipation.

What must be conquered and what must be fled? An answer is not required. The aim of the exhibition is to question, pragmatically, the flight aspect of any conquest, as well as the conquering aspect of any flight.

The very title of the exhibition can be the subject of questioning: art — classical (think Leonardo da Vinci), modern and contemporary — has always been intimately linked with the military and its vocabulary (avant-garde, vanguard, etc.). Is art permanently embedded? Can it short circuit any casting in stone of the meaning by striking and fleeing simultaneously? Is art the last morally acceptable hit-and-run?