Julien Salaud — Armée de l’air, armée de terre, tout le monde dehors ! — Suzanne Tarasieve, Loft 19 — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 13 → November 10, 2012

La rentrée des galeries — 13 vernissages à ne pas manquer Après la désertion du mois d’août, les galeries font leur rentrée en fanfare et, comme chaque année, entament cette nouvelle saison avec un programme aussi chargé qu’excitant.

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.

Can a gallery be a war zone, a battlefield, a territory where earth and sky clash? A place where one is projected into the heart of a clash between creatures that came down from the heavens and others that leap out of forests?

Irrespective of any narrative dimension, the power of Julien Salaudʼs work lies, precisely, in the fact that he never simply places a piece in a space like a piece of merchandise in a shop: on the contrary, he occupies, or colonises the host space, turning the walls inside out like glove so that they become part of what should be seen as a theatre of operations, with the gallery as frontier, for these imaginary armies that size each other up and then join battle.

Beyond this clash, which here will probably be the “stage” of the exhibition, Salaud works on transformation. He probes, he explores, he tests the process of change. His works are always about a seizure, between two states, like a halfway house, as if we were being given access to that moment between before and after. Many of the hybrid animal figures that he elaborates seem still to be gestating, not having reached their definitive form, but no longer in their original state, either. As if suspended between two existences. This “indeterminate” state also features in the artistʼs drawings, which combine dreamlike abstract motifs with human or animal figures.

Salaudʼs works bring to mind the notions of permeability and fluidity, which are at the heart of shamanism. The fluid relation between nature culture, as opposed to the “opposition” we are taught, and the inter-permeability between the real world and the spirit world, the beyond. To really appreciate Salaudʼs works, we must therefore be prepared to abandon some of our hygienic rationality, to give up our over-cultured formal notions, to raise the barriers we have erected between “good” and “bad” taste. We must be ready to join the fight and let our judgements mutate.

Born in 1977, Julien Salaud lives and works in Orléans. His artistic practice is strongly influenced by his studies in biochemistry, history and ethnology. He won the first prize at the 55th Salon de Montrouge en 2010 and his many exhibitions include Rituels (2011) at the Fondation Ricard and Les Maîtres du désordre at the Quai Branly museum (2012), which show will tour to the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, Germany, 31 August to 2 December 2012) and “La Caixa” Foundation (Madrid, 7 February to 19 May, 2013). Julien Salaud has taken over the Salle Alice Guy at the Palais de Tokyo for the Triennale 2012, (on show to 31 March 2013).

The texts in the exhibition catalogue have been written by Emmanuelle Lequeux (writer contemporary art), Gaël Charbau (art critic and curator) and Manuela de Barros (university lecturer on art).