Art Me!

Curated by Dominique Moulon for Galerie Charlot

Artists: Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Sabrina Ratté, Marie Serruya, Jeanne Susplugas, Penelope Umbrico Aram Bartholl, Mikhail Margolis, Pierrick Sorin, Eric Vernhes, Du Zhenjun, Universal Everything

At the heart of the Art Me! exhibition is the desire to reconsider what unites artists to their artworks, which they inhabit, populate with characters, or open to the public. The idea, therefore, as Allan Kaprow suggested in the Sixties, is that nothing must separate art from life, as attested by his Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (1993). Nowadays, there are still artists performing happenings whether privately, in the public space, or on the Internet, benefiting from the magic and efficiency of contemporary technologies in order to embody their creations. We must recognise that there are many techniques that encourage artists to rethink the nature of their relationship to the beings that literally ‘populate’ their works, for example: scanning, modelling, or motion capture, and also artificial intelligence. The 3D models thus represented are in the exact measure of real people. It could be a matter of detail, one might think, but in fact this distinction is likely to reinforce the empathy of the audience inevitably recognising itself in a gesture or a posture that is strangely familiar. But revolutions, in art, are also the consequences of the democratisations of the artistic practices due to the emergence of innovations: going from the Kodak film to the Apple iPhone, not to mention the platforms of sharing, precisely where artistic practices mix with those of hobbyists without knowing who influences who! Indeed, how many artists collect their image files by tracking them through their index names in the realm of emojis to create collages that continue well beyond the frames? Finally, there are the artworks of which we are the heroes: the creations that we experience, through manipulation or virtually. By interacting, we magnify technical objects; in immersion, without any body, we become the essential component of the artwork that we complete, in the case that we are not already the artwork itself. Like the artists creating happenings and more widely performers who, in action, not only make an act of creation, but also are the creation itself. This brings us back to the French translation of Allan Kaprow’s book that is even more precise: L’art et la vie confondus.

Dominique Moulon