This thematic exhibition presents works for the most part recently acquired by the Frac Occitanie Montpellier. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the structure, and following the monographs devoted to Lisa Milroy and Thibault Brunet, they show the diversity of artistic research of our time and demonstrate the richness of a collection supported by the Occitanie Region and the State (Drac Occitanie).
Important artists in the field of contemporary art, in what is already its "history", such as the Ukrainian Boris Mikhaïlov, the Canadian Lynne Cohen (1944-2014) or the Austrian Franz West (1947-2012) rub shoulders with younger artists, currently working in France, in Occitanie itself, or having been invited in the artistic structures of the region: Samuel Buckman (Frac OM, 2015), Guillaume Constantin (Crac, Sète; Maison des arts Georges et Claude Pompidou, Cajarc), Isabelle Giovacchini (Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse), Yo-Yo Gonthier (Chapelle Saint-Jacques, Saint-Gaudens), Laura Gozlan (La Panacée, Montpellier). Finally, Julien Prévieux, an internationally recognized French artist, Dario Robleto, an American artist, and Nathalie Wetzel, who lives in Switzerland, complete this gathering with pieces of the highest quality.
An exhibition is necessarily, like a collection, a selection. It is based on choices, arbitrations and, in the field of the artistic expression which obeys subjective criteria, it can be indefinitely disputed being obviously contestable... It is that what one names "contemporary art" is a generic term hiding the extreme individualism, in the positive sense, of the art in democratic regime. Reverse side of this freedom of each one to invent its the feeling, for many (notably on the side of the spectators), of not "to find itself there", the discontent (cf. Art, contents and discontent, of Thomas McEvilley), even, sometimes, the rancor which is born also of the disillusions concerning a real - ultimate aim of the human desire - not letting itself easily seize...
Contemporary art is then one of the spaces of the human expression where the tension between desire and "resentment" is the strongest. There is nothing surprising there. Because the works are, at the time when they appear, as much bearers of astonishments as of... detonations: the constructions and deconstructions of forms, even more disconcerting than the verbal games, lead us on paths often very steep and unstable. On the grounds open to the four winds which are those of the artistic creation, better be equipped with a good sweater and a solid pair of grolles...
The works in this exhibition have in common that they seem to take hold of something heavy, taken from reality itself, and turn it around in lightness, light, poetry, even humor: Groll'Up! The art can it tear us off the heaviness of the reality and raise us a little, beyond the limits and the constraints of all kinds. The artists confront institutions, techniques, outdated conventions, empty crystallizations, and strive to renew them, to overturn them too, in order to return them to the beating heart of the living, of which we are all accountable.
Com. Emmanuel Latreille
