La Serre at mfc2 by La Ville Rayée — Michèle didier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 22, 2013 → January 4, 2014

x1 at mfc2 by x2 = a new concept of programming at mfc-michèle didier

For two years now, mfc-michèle didier gallery in Paris has been dedicated to presenting the productions made by the eponym publisher. Since its opening, it has also the purpose of fostering the reflection on the specific discipline of the artist’s book. Furthermore, the gallery offers the possibility to enhance the importance and the role of ephemeras as well as published, multiplied works in contemporary art.

In this regard, mfc-michèle didier introduces in November 2013 a new project of programming: mfc2 .

mfc2 is based on the principle of the invitation, which works on a double protocol:

 — Guest 1 = x1 has “carte blanche” to invest the space of the first room or the second room of the gallery, both if necessary.There is mainly one constraint, which is to echo, through the proposed project, the questions related to the artist’s book, printed works and/or multiplied art works. x1 will be an artist most of the time, but can also be curator, historian, writer, critic, journalist, film director, people with multiple voices or multiple voices in a group.

 — Guest 2 = x2 receives a mission, which is to take over mfc-michèle didier’s publications catalogue, to interpret it and reveal it in a new way. x2 will be a designer, an architect, a scenographer or may also be an artist. mfc-michèle didier’s goal is here to contextualize the publisher’s productions, which will take place in a space imagined by people who are familiar with enclosed volumes, such as the private sphere. For two years, mfc-michèle didier has been unfolding the artists’ books on the walls of the gallery, why not propose this time a more intimate and furnished approach? Why not close the book that was previously opened?

 —  x1 and x2 may sometimes share or exchange their respective qualities.

 —  x1 et x2 may merge.

“The gallery space quotes the tableaux and makes them art” writes Brian O’Doherty in his famous text Inside the White Cube. The Ideology of the Gallery Space published in a series of articles published in Artforum from 1976.

mfc2 cares about this question initiated by the presentation of art — in this case, for mfc-michèle didier it’s often the artist’s book — in this « unshadowed, white, clean, artificial » space that’s the art gallery, as we all know, but that can also be the book. The gallery-space is here invested by x1 — by entrusting the place to someone else, mfc-michèle didier renews the interpretation of the space and questions at the same time the notion of its own identity and recognition. The book-space is here in the hands of x2 — mfc-michèle didier proposes thus a new relationship between the space of the gallery and the space of the book, and even more through gesture of the guest — the gallery as a gesture (Fourth essay of Inside the White Cube published in Artforum in 1981).

La Serre is x1

The bookshop La Serre was conceived in 2012 upon the initiative of four Paris fine arts students, based on the following observation: artists produce on their own quality books that they have a hard time distributing or placing on display. So they imagined La Serre (literally “The Glasshouse”), a mobile and lightweight architectural structure, totally transparent, able to flourish as quickly as a mushroom.

Upon mfc-michèle didier’s invitation, La Serre will settle up for the winter at 66 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth in Paris during a month and a half. La Serre will display a selection of its fund, which will evolve in the course of the exhibition.

The gallery will also invite five of La Serre’s displayed artists to extend the content of their publications in the space-time framed by the exhibition in a gallery: Franziska Kabisch, Soufiane Ababri, aalliicceelleessccaanne&ssoonniiaaddeerrzzyyppoollsskkii, Tania Gheerbrandt and Louise Siffert. The term of the exhibition has been established according to a cycle during which the interventions will co-exist and get activated one after the other. There will be five performances, performed lectures, activations, readings, starting from one or more art works, that have been previously published, printed or simply projected.

Performances every Thursday at 7 pm at mfc-michèle didier gallery: Franziska Kabisch November 21, Soufiane Ababri November 28, aalliicceelleessccaanne&ssoonniiaaddeerrzzyyppoollsskkii December 5, Tania Gheerbrandt December 12 et Louise Siffert December 19.

La Ville Rayée is x2

La Ville Rayée is a group founded in 2006, consisting of three architects, David Apheceix, Benjamin Lafore and Sébastien Martinez Barat. Considering architecture is a broad field gathering multiple types of exercises, La Ville Rayée’s work converges between theoretical prospection and pragmatic challenge.

A selection of mfc-michèle didier’s publication will be placed on one of their creations: Adventures Close to Home.

Adventures Close to Home is a series of monofunctionnal tables in whitened ash. Display of a single object: a cup- table, a PC-table, a plant-table and thus in the context of the exhibition at the gallery, a book-table. It’s as if the tables create domestic totems. Playing with intermediary scales and the use’s specificity, this series of five tables that can be lined up and combined at home create a singular scenery. Assembled, the tables form a mobile object with sculptural shapes. Dissembled, they resonate each other and give rise to objects that are placed on the stage of these delicate pedestals. They will be presented individually, offering for each of mfc-michèle didier’s production an autonomous reading.

The five tables of Adventures Close to Home are all mediums for familiar uses, endless compositions where extreem functionalism meets the reminiscence of architectural patterns.