Pièces montrées in the framework of 30th anniversary of FRAC

Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis, France

Oct 3, 2013 - Feb 8, 2014

Curators: Raphaël Zarka, Olivier Grasser, Estelle Pietrzyk 

 

In 2013, the Fracs (French regional contemporary art collections) are celebrating their 30th anniversary. In Alsace, the local Frac is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a wide-ranging, institutionally orientated exhibition being held concurrently over 4 sites under the title Pièces Montrées – Frac Alsace, 30 years collecting. It has been put together from the Frac collection and is being presented at the Chapelle des Annonciades / Historical Museum Haguenau, the MAMCS Strasbourg (Modern and Contemporary Art Museum), the Frac Alsace Sélestat and the Fernet-Branca Foundation in Saint-Louis.

Pièces Montrées - Frac Alsace, 30 years collecting is intended as the sum of different views of the Frac collection as seen by three generations and three types of specialists in art and contemporary art (artists, art historians, directors of institutions). Each part of the exhibition has been designed separately but always in complementary relationship with the others. The fact that the exhibition as a whole is necessarily a collective undertaking is no obstacle to showing the wide variety of the Frac Alsace collection. Historical pieces, works whose authors have become major artists, the contemporary scene with its multiple artistic languages, a multicultural slant, not to mention the full range of the collection's potential (thematic or monographic approaches, acquisition policies etc.), all these need to be made visible, using less piecemeal methods of circulation than current ones.

The selection of works at Strasbourg's Modern and Contemporary Art Museum is a proposition by Raphaël Zarka, in dialogue with Estelle Pietrzyk, directress of the MAMCS and Olivier Grasser, director of Frac Alsace. The exhibition Forms and Forces, brings together thirty or so works by various artists born between 1899 and 1978. The artistic media involved - painting, sculpture, photography, installations and videos - are equally diverse, and on the face of it, the statements made are widely dissimilar. The encounter between tutelary figures and today's creators thus takes place in the course of what is more like a journey than an exhibition sequence: neither chronological nor thematic, the ordered arrangement of the works is the product of a subjective consciousness leading to moments of tension, crisis or grace.

 

The artists: Adam Adach, Dove Allouche, Ziad Antar, Balthasar Burkhard, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Chen Zhen, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, Henri Cueco, Edith Dekyndt, Helmut Dorner, Sylvie Fanchon, Philippe Gronon, Klaus Jung, Karl Kels, Mario Merz, Henri Michaux, Richard Monnier, Laurent Montaron, Aurelie Nemours, Yvan Salomone, Pierre Savatier, Franck Scurti, Vladimir Skoda, Cy Twombly et Raphaël Zarka.

 

Saint-Louis, October 2013