Veining
[Also refers to a protruding groove allowing air or water circulation in a closed circuit]
Alice Raymond – Elise Girardot
Two practices, two paths, two stories, two generations and common concerns.
5UN7 is welcoming the second chapter of the polyptych exhibition Nervure, around the themes of air, space, crossings and journeys with artworks by Alice Raymond and curated by Élise Girardot from 21st February to 24th March 2019.
A project born from an almost serendipitous encounter, travels, movements, sensibility, territories. A partnership as much human as artistic, multifaceted, where different approaches are made to exchange, dialogue and be compared. Alice Raymond avoids narration in her work, whereas Élise Girardot seeks to find it in hers. Alice Raymond speaks with a vocabulary of territory, space and geography. The artist often uses materials linked to her movements, travels, encounters and questionings –and always to the place she is in-.
Every exhibition of Nervures is a chapter, and the project is the sum of all those chapters. The project Nervures as a whole that would be visible all at once doesn’t exist; it is a “mental exhibition”, an exhibition taking place in one’s mind: only the visitors can add all the chapters seen in their minds to grasp the whole project.
This project was born and was built as the meetings between artist and curator grew in number, where numerous common interests and focal points emerged. Language is one of them, stated and understood in different manners by the artist and the curator, but that unites them, as nomadism for example, lived and experienced by both of them in their professional lives. This nomadism can also be seen as a metaphor in the very form chosen for Nervures : each exhibition inhabits a different space and venue. Likewise, each chapter is a reinvention, from the pieces exhibited to the text written and the subtitle of the exhibitions.
At 5UN7 a small drawing called “Dépaysement” [change of scenery, disorientation, editor’s note] welcomes us on the left when entering the gallery. Two photographs are hung high and a folded map seems to point us in a certain direction or to give us information about the traces of a past journey. Alice Raymond wanted to create a specific piece for this exhibition: in the centre, the sculpture “Espace” [space, editor’s note] is the artwork around which everything else is articulated. The code of this word “ESPACE” suggests the movements of visitors in the geographic and mental space created and offered. Alice and Élise wanted a second chapter more focused on sculpture, after a first instalment at the gallery Eponyme where a majority of drawings and paintings were exhibited, with “some small announcements, like omens”: sculptures shown in the outside window and hung up very high on the walls of the gallery.
There is a true complementarity and synergy of approaches in this duo. In March 2018 Élise Girardot returns from Brazil where she worked on a series of writings. Then the project Nervures was born. Initially their collaboration is anchored in Bordeaux, with the first instalment at Eponyme in 2018 and this second chapter at 5UN7 this year. A will to expand this territory of experimentation emerged, and that is why the third chapter of Nervures is investing La Ligne Bleue in Carsac Aillac in the Dordogne region.
The act of writing is extremely important for Élise Girardot: “writing is like creating exhibitions and curating exhibitions is a form of writing”.
Nervures is a monographic exhibition presenting artworks already produced by Alice and others in the process of being created. The successive scenographies show as many old artworks as recent ones, and the scenography is a total carte blanche given to the curator. Nervures is an evolving, organic project, with a winding development, as the veining of leaves. Long duration and research are focal points, both for the artist and the curator.
One of the visitors explains that there is a real sensation of welcoming within these exhibitions, in a humble and light environment, a sense of well-being, without ever losing the seriousness of the subject.
You can discover the third chapter of Nervures [Se dit aussi d’une ligne en relief dans un tissu] / [Also refers to an embossed line in a fabric] at La Ligne Bleue in Carsac Aillac from 16 March to 27 April 2019.
Interviewed by Julie Hoedts
Site de l’artiste : Alice Raymond