CURA.

Michele Ciacciofera (1969, Italy) is offering Passerelle an experience which may appear impossible, that of ‘Condensing the Infinite’. From his native Sardinia to the Alps and then Brittany and Scotland, he has observed the ancient sculptural forms, such as memorial stones and menhirs, on which human civilisations are based. In his European journey, he considers the inevitable end of us all and the infinite potential of our visual culture to go beyond the world dreamed up by our ancestors. ‘Condensing the Infinite’ is an attempt to write a common history, a history of the forms that our brains all recognise to a greater or lesser extent.
The body of works presented in the Passerelle patio has been entitled ‘Menhirs’ by the artist. Ciacciofera is fascinated by megalithic art, yet decided to work from fragile, modest materials, essentially workshop waste including paper and cardboard, the very opposite of the eternity of stone. In this sense this series recalls the work of the Arte Povera artists, an Italian artistic movement that began in the late 1960s. It was characterised by the use of ordinary humble materials, often natural or salvaged, and reflected a desire to reconnect with original simplicity and authenticity as well as a rejection of overconsumption. This heritage is never claimed or stated but it seems essential to consider some of Ciacciofera’s creations through the prism of a ‘new poor art’. Recycling and the use of natural materials have become as much an aesthetic necessity for the artist as they are a political and militant requirement. His sculptures abound in poetic details such as little ceramics or painted organic elements, evoking at times the style of the Cycladic idols, at times the… [lire plus]

Exhibition presented by Loïc Le Gall

Han Bing (1986, China) is presenting “7:77”, her first personal exhibition to be held at a European institution, at Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain. A graduate of CAFA in Beijing – China’s central Academy of Fine Arts – and of Parsons School of Design in New York, Han Bing has studied a very diverse range of references and influences, enabling her to develop multicultural sensibility and an enhanced vision of the world.

Han Bing’s painting is intimately linked to the abundance of images available in the public space. The artist sometimes captures elements from posters mentally and sometimes photographs an advertisement with her phone. From all around her she picks out images which we no longer see because they are in front of us all the time. Back in her studio, she assembles her discoveries very freely over the canvas. Her approach echoes those of the new realists of the 1960s, among them Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains. Villeglé took ripped and loose posters from the walls of the town and transformed them into vibrant and poetic works of art. Like Han Bing today, he revealed the strata of the urban environment, which bear the marks of time and of human intervention. Han Bing willingly
evokes the ‘anonymous poetry’ of her paintings. The juxtapositions she creates emerge ‘in unexpected ways’ and very spontaneously. She prefers using the word ‘to grow’; rather than ‘to build’ when talking about her way of arranging the canvas and compares painting to a living, organic material.

Part of the exhibition is devoted to works on paper. Han Bing uses newspaper articles as raw material. She selects them for their aesthetic quality and covers up certain parts of the photographs… [lire plus]

Exhibition presented by Loïc Le Gall

Amélie Caritey (1998, Côte d’Ivoire), a graduate of the École européenne d’art de Bretagne – Rennes campus, took part in the Residence Workshops offered by Passerelle and Documents d’Artistes Bretagne. Shortly before her residence at the art centre, she spent two months in Côte d’Ivoire, the country she left at the age of three. This second journey to the land of her birth, the first having taken place in 2019, enabled her to bring back a large number of photographs, like so much evidence of the country of her origins. Aware of being on the margins, yet still feeling linked to that nation’s story, the exhibition ‘Bonne arrivée chérie coco’ [Welcome darling coco] is a poetic expression of the artist’s view of a country she as yet knows very little about. The exhibition therefore offers a glimpse of the beginnings of a dual culture under construction, as well as the quest for a bi-national identity.

Defining herself as ‘Afropean’, with one European parent and one African, but having been brought up in a European cultural environment, Amélie Caritey recounts her journey as a “search for a home”. Her photographs often show living spaces, or what is between them such as doors, entrances and windows. These elements express an ambivalence, reflecting the feelings of the artist in that place: invitations to enter the intimacy of people’s homes or perhaps obstacles in the way.

Architecture, motifs and colours particularly captivated the artist and they appear in abundance in the exhibition. Amélie Caritey trained in design and has observed very carefully what makes up the environment of the towns and villages she has visited all over the world, compiling her observations into a visual… [lire plus]