Une nature moderne — Le Crédac, Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 17 days: April 6 → June 29, 2025

Artists: Guillaume Aubry, Yto Barrada, Vincent Barré, Kenza Brand, Jonny Bruce, Simon Boudvin, Pierre Creton, David Horvitz, Suzanne Husky, Pierre Joseph, Jochen Lempert, Tony Matelli, Silvana Mc Nulty, Léa Muller & Sophie Kaplan, Lin May Saeed, Noémie Sauve, Shimabuku, Howard Sooley, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané — Curatorship: Claire Le Restif

In this first quarter of the 21st century, what is “modern nature”? Deregulated and sometimes perceived as hostile, how can it, nevertheless, be a bulwark against the anxieties of the present day?

In his diary entitled Modern Nature, British artist Derek Jarman (1942-1994) recounts how the garden he cultivated at Dungeness, in the south of England, played an essential role. Ill, the artist rejected any ornamental conception of the garden and gave the plants he cultivated a vital, resilient force. In his garden, he gives birth to nature as a place of life, hope and resistance in the face of illness, death and despondency.

In this wake, the exhibition A modern nature brings together artists who, through their gestures and attitudes, their poetry and commitments, resist, preserve and draw attention to threatened fragilities, whether plant or animal. The exhibition area is seen here as a “living” organism. It’s a kind of soil born and enriched by the relationships that the artists and Crédac have forged through their various collaborations. Whether they have already been exhibited or are doing so for the first time, their works are in dialogue with Derek Jarman’s garden of “healing colors”. For, as artist Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) said of his long-running Little Sparta garden in Scotland, “some gardens are described as refuges when they are really assaults”.