Simon Boudvin — Grain — Le Crédac, Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 15 → March 20, 2022

Simon Boudvin — Le Crédac, Ivry Le Crédac présente une exposition personnelle de Simon Boudvin qui développe, depuis plusieurs années, une multitude de recherches ... 2 - Bien Critique

It all starts with a place, dates and an object. Simon Boudvin gives you this information right away, in the title of each of his pieces, as if they were coordinates. They let you reconstitute the what, when and where of the
investigation he carried out, often over the course of several years, but they also reveal the foundation of his
creative process.

Boudvin works in a slowed-down temporality, probably closer to that of archaeology or geology. His meticulous observations and topographic accounts can’t be rushed.

The word grain, often associated with the graininess of photos, paper and wood, is here also meant to be understood as the smallest component in a unit, as various bits to produce a whole. A grain, in terms of the previously-cited objects, provides texture to something that would otherwise be smooth and thus creates shapes and materiality. In a spoken language, grains would be the equivalent of individual words that can be inflected and articulated with each other within a grammatical matrix. When referring to a place, it would lead us to study and interrogate the typology of the inanimate and organic objects around us that “speak” about us and our history, as well as their own apparition or making and usage.
In this solo show Boudvin examines certain such objects and their different variations. He presents four studies of objects (the front of buildings, a stool, a glass, and a car) found in four different territories (Hanoi, Saint-Imier, Rome and Flins) distributed among the Crédac’s three exhibition rooms.

Born 1979 in Le Mans, Simon Boudvin lives and works in Bagnolet.
His practice is attentive to changes in the territories he traverses as he undertakes a detailed reading of them and then reconstitutes them in the form of descriptions or photos. The SHED Normandy contemporary art centre and the FRAC regional art centre in Caen devoted a show to his work on 2019; le Centre d’art contemporain Les Capucins in Embrun did likewise in 2018. He was on the shortlist of artists nominated by Claire Le Restif for the Prix Fondation Pernod Ricard in 2019.

Boudvin had a 10-month residency at the Crédac in 2019–20 as part of the greater Paris regional programme for artist residencies and with the support of the Ivry municipal government. This was the first residency at the Manufacture des Œillets, a former factory complex where the Crédac is housed. His studio became a base camp for urban photographic expeditions combining his interests in architecture and urban ecology. The project he carried out during this residency, which began in November 2019, was a photographic survey supplemented by cartographic work in the housing estates (projects) owned by the Ivry public housing authority (OPH), mapping out their meeting rooms, other public facilities and grassroots organizational sites as intermediate elements between private homes and public spaces. His work was based on meetings with local actors and his own explorations, both on the ground and through architectural blueprints, to find and represent these spaces.

Subsequently Boudvin was awarded a fellow at the Académie de France in the Villa Médicis in Rome for 2020–21.