Round tables / talks on Saturday 04 and Sunday 12 Nov at 15 p.m.

For the 2023 Flagship Exhibition of the third edition of the Biennale de l'Image Tangible, we will let ourselves be carried away by the wind of lightness, absurdity and derision. As an antidote to the dark prophecies that overwhelm us, we will savor the impertinence of those who do not see everything black. Of those who know how to bend reality and transport us with their fantasy beyond contemporary anxieties. But far from any discourse and any morality, this artistic posture underlines the state of despair of our societies and the need to combat it with discernment.

And we need it. With the end of ideologies and the absence of any positive perspective, the imagination of our time has suddenly darkened to the point of projecting itself into dark futures and counter-utopian universes. Not that there are no other reasons to fuel this darkness, including the climate crisis, wars and the recent epidemic, but pessimism has taken hold in people's minds for a long time. In this context, many artists have refocused on formal research often driven by the considerable scope offered by new technologies. Others document and act out the catastrophe to come, but the absence of solutions and the withdrawal into oneself generally characterize our time. Exit then the revolution and its untenable promises, for as much must we be satisfied with reasonable or punctual solutions to re-enchant the future? Should we believe in technological promises to save the world or adopt them precisely to never question ourselves?

The artists in this flagship exhibition do not pose the problem in these terms, and if their works sometimes seem disconnected from current issues, they nonetheless address issues of gender, identity, sexuality, consumption and more generally. of our own place in the world in the metaphysical sense of the term. Of great formal diversity, the form covers several registers, editing, installation, staging, photographic objects and involves multiple techniques.

When the works of Erwin Würm, Frédérique Daubal or Roman Signer compete in imagination in a wacky register, Tadao Cern prefers to take samples from the field and testify like a reporter. The installations of Sandrine de Pas, the cut-outs of Amir Chasson or the portraits of Nicolas Deville form a heterogeneous and coherent corpus of provocative and disturbing images. Rachel Joode, Anne De Vries, Letha Wilson have fun deconstructing our perception of space, both physical and mental, while Manon Pretto, Oli Serenson, Marie Serruya invest in technology to develop universes where the assumed artificiality of their pieces acts as a distorting mirror of reality. Lingfei Guan's work explores Asian fetishism and eroticism with cynicism and a clever touch of kitsch. Philippe Katerine, known for his musical or cinematographic performances, puts a foot into the tangible by exhibiting part of his latest plastic project Mignonism .

If the sum of all these views forms a whole, it is because it stands out in several points from current trends. By the human presence in the works but also by the subtle commitment that humor and casualness allow. Going against the grain, this corpus is part of the concept of Heterotopia dear to Michel Foucault[1]. And this exhibition effectively offers an autonomous space, far from trends, dominant thinking and standardized perceptions. A space of decompression where utopias and dystopias become a little more tangible.

In an ever more catastrophic topicality, the offbeat point of view of these artists dares to introduce the joker spirit that inhabits them. Without any particular ambition to remedy our ideological failures, their work challenges us and encourages us to take serious things more lightly. In the absence of any other message, will we be able to seize the pole, abandon any idea of ​​seriousness since there is no solution?

It seems that a new air can finally blow on a world which does not stop dying. If humor is the politeness of despair, it can also overturn the table of all academicism. The urgency today is to put energy back at the center and even more to shake up the codes of a pessimistic and formatted era.

Dominique Clerc

Amir Chasson / Cyriak / Frederique Daubal / Nicolas Deville / Sandrine De Pas / Lingfei Guan / Philippe Katerine / Manon Pretto / Marie Serruya / Oli Sorenson