Jan Fabre — Chimères et Portrait d’un artiste en évasion — Templon Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 14 → May 21, 2011

In 2008, Jan Fabre’s work appeared at the Musée du Louvre as part of “L’Ange de la métamorphose”, an exceptional solo exhibition. The event marked a highpoint in the recent career of this multidisciplinary artist who, since the late 1990s, has achieved world renown for his work in theatre and the visual arts.
Galerie Templon will devote its two spaces to show two artistic projects by Jan Fabre: 30 rue Beaubourg and Impasse Beaubourg.

“Jan Fabre is a gangster alchemist who is obsessed by everything that changes. His works always focus on the interaction between (…) the bodily and the spiritual”

Paul Demets

Rue Beaubourg, the artist will be concentrating on the brain, the anatomical component that is the physical counterpart to the intellect and the seat of human creativity. Some fifteen new drawings and sculptures specially created for the space—including an astonishing pair of brain-legs—explore the poetical possibilities that the organ offers. A video, Is the brain the most sexy part of the body? continues this exploration: in it Jan Fabre, determined as ever to pursue his idea of a dialogue between key areas of human knowledge, is seen in discussion with Edward O. Wilson, one of the leading scientists of modern times.

Impasse Beaubourg plays host to the artist as gangster: Jan Fabre becomes France’s former n°1 public enemy Jacques Mesrine in Art kept me out of jail, an unforgettable performance that took place in the Musée du Louvre in 2008. This is a unique moment recorded on video and in black & white photographs, backed by a large number of drawings illustrating the twists and turns of his creative process. “When I think, I draw; when I draw, I am thinking,” Fabre explains. In these fascinating self-portraits on photographic paper in pencil, Jan Fabre seems capable of endless self-transformation: prisoner, monster, clown or victim.

Born in 1958 in Antwerp, Jan Fabre began to be interested in performance as early as 1976, and was working as a stage director and choreographer by 1980. Since then he has directed around thirty pieces combining dance with theatre. The radical style of works such as Je suis sang (2000) and Orgy of Tolerance (2009) is a regular cause of controversy. An artist with an irrepressible urge to draw, Fabre also creates sculptures, models and installations that illustrate the major themes of his work: metamorphosis and the artist as warrior in the cause of beauty.

Jan Fabre’s has recently exhibited during the Venice Biennale (2007, 2009). Dedicated exhibitions of his work have also been held at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (Nice, 2003) and MuHKA — Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst (Antwerp, 2006). In the spring of 2011, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo will be handing its gardens and exhibition space over to him from 10 April for an exhibition entitled “Hortus/ Corpus”. His new production, entitled Prometheus Landscape II, will be showing at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris from April 1 to 8.