La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain — About — Slash Paris

Launched in 1999 by the City of Noisy-le-Sec, the centre for contemporary art is backed by the Île-de-France Region Cultural Affairs Office (DRAC) — Ministry of Culture, the Seine-Saint-Denis département and the Île-de-France Region.
It is also part of d.c.a — association de développement des centres d’art contemporain, tram — réseau art contemporain Paris/Île-de-France, Arts en résidence — réseau national et BLA ! Association des professionnel•le•s de la médiation en art contemporain.

The La Galerie programme reflects the diversity of today’s art in terms of a range of aesthetic and social issues, via the work of emergent or established artists with local, national or international reputations. The programme revolves around two main themes: first of all genius loci, the spirit of place defined by the centre’s distinctive architectural, social and historical associations; and secondly, the word galerie (“gallery”), with its different meanings and implications.

The exhibitions
Gallery: A room or building for the display of works of art.
For its four annual exhibitions, the programme systematically starts out from specific ideas or pretexts, either literary, architectural or musical. The avenues explored by these solo and collective exhibitions complement each other, while opening up fresh perspectives and lines of enquiry.

Receptivity and commitment to the local
Gallery: A long room or passage, partly open at the side; a balcony providing space for an audience.
Ongoing work on the Grand Paris project is bringing radical change to Noisy-le-Sec and the intermunicipal Est Ensemble locality. La Galerie is participating by going out to make contact with potential visitors and engage in collaborative ventures with publics otherwise lacking the chance to develop a taste for today’s visual arts. The art centre functions as an incubator for ideas, an agora where knowledge can be shared in close connection with the region’s new visual arts organisations, notably Micro-Folie Noisy-le-Sec and Komunuma in nearby Romainville.

The cultural programme
_Gallery: A group of spectators. _
The fundamental principles of an art centre: to guide and assist the emergence of challenging projects and their production and dissemination, while constantly mindful of the need for accessibility for the public at large. In line with these requirements, La Galerie’s cultural programme is aimed at establishing a dynamic of “social involvement”, of interplay with Noisy-le-Sec residents that will let them “blow the spectators away”. This project stresses a day-to-day forging of links between the aesthetic and the social spheres, between an exacting creativity receptive to the world and its challenges, and a cultural transmission adapted to each individual. With respect to contemporary art — and especially its artists — modes of seeing, encountering and living together are imaginable, which it seems important to make the most of. The urban and social context offered by La Galerie is an ideal tool for contributing to dialogue between artists, local stakeholders and the various publics.