Histoire de l’art cherche personnages…

Major works from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art forming part of the Narrative Figuration movement (paintings from the 1960s by Gilles Aillaud, Erró, Gérard Fromanger and Jacques Monory) are shown alongside original artwork (plates, graphic novels, installations) by contemporary comic-book authors, scriptwriters and artists, as well as selected works from the CAPC’s own collection. The works on display have been assembled into a thematic journey based on an original exhibition design that borrows its formal vocabulary from Martin Vaughn-James’s visual novel The Cage.

Entitled Histoire de l’art cherche personnages… [History of Art Seeks Protagonists], the exhibition gathers over one hundred works focusing on the representation of the human figure and the individual’s existence in its struggle with the environment, with history and with others.
The first part of the exhibition is dedicated to formal explorations of human representation and existence. Between absence, disappearance, becoming-animal, incompleteness and proliferation, the artists’ quest essentially revolves around the human figure. The second, more narrative, chapter of the exhibition is in search of meaning, or rather, of what ‘makes sense’ for humans. How do they consider their (material, moral, social) existence, how do they manage their relationships to others or themselves (their ‘inner demons’)? And how does the individual’s story, or history with a small ‘h’, fit in the grand narrative?

Among other things, this joint exhibition project aims to chart the main developments and achievements in the figurative arts since the end of the 1960s. To what extent have artists reconsidered the question of narrative or social and political critique? How do they manage to root their work in reality, this ‘precious movement of life’, as the art critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot called it, which has undergone profound social, economic, geopolitical and technological changes?

With Absalon, Valerio Adami, Gilles Aillaud, Leonor Antunes, Eduardo Arroyo, David B., Christian Babou, Pierre Buraglio, Charles Burns, Cham, Pascal Convert, Hervé Di Rosa, Noël Dolla, Philippe Dupuy, Equipo Crónica, Equipo Realidad, Erró, Richard Fauguet, Chohreh Feyzdjou, André Franquin, Gérard Fromanger, Jochen Gerner, Claude Gilli, Marcel Gotlieb, Emmanuel Guibert, Keith Haring, Noritoshi Hirakawa, On Kawara, Patrice Killoffer, Peter Klasen, les ready-made appartiennent à tout le monde®, Suehiro Maruo, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Mario Merz, Pierre Molinier, Jacques Monory, Chantal Montellier, Bernard Pagès, Bernard Rancillac, Ruppert & Mulot, Claude Rutault, Joe Sacco, Johanna Schipper, Antonio Seguí, Richard Serra, Joann Sfar, Pierre Soulages, Art Spiegelman, Benjamin Swaim, Lewis Trondheim, Johannes Van der Beek, Martin Vaughn-James, Claude Viallat, Chris Ware, Willem, Winshluss, Raphaël Zarka

Curators: Alice Motard with Anne Cadenet and François Poisay (CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux); Anne Hélène Hoog (Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image, Angoulême); Yan Schubert (Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève)

Exhibition Design: Éric Troussicot assisted by Coline Clavelloux (Sils Maria architecture)

Conservation and design of the hanging of the graphic works: Rebeca Zea assisted by Emma Barada and Olivia Bayle

Exhibition booklet: Philippe Dupuy with the complicity of Rémy Sellier

Film programme of the Cinéma: Thomas Bernard for La Véranda. With: Blanquet & Olive, Julie Doucet, Pierre La Police, Fabio Viscogliosi, Winshluss

Exhibition co-organised with Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image, Angoulême and Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève.