VII C
What is the most memorable curatorial project you have ever encountered? What was important about it?
The most interesting projects are commissioned works for specific places and, often, projects for which the exhibition room is an anachronism.
I am thinking of my experience of Walter De Maria’s Earth Room in New
York and of Lara Almarcegui’s project I curated here in Dijon, a related
intervention that transposed the physical reality of a place.
Define your own curatorial practice and trajectory.
My first exhibitions were monographic and featured new installations
by Dora García, Imogen Stidworthy, Harald Thys, and Michael van den
Abeele at the Etablissement d’en face, an art centre then in an old factory in Brussels. I rapidly decided to move the Etablissement to a smaller
and more austere space. The new place inscribed itself in the city to
which it was open through a glass window. It worked mostly as a production house for projects. In this space, I developed Legal Space/Public
Space, which dealt with the development of public space.
At the FRAC Burgundy in Dijon, I am exploring many different contemporary questions raised by relationships with space: architecture and
urbanism, private and public space, legislation and individual freedom,
and exhibition space. I am also adding works that deal with space to
the collection. The collection already features works by Dan Graham,
Maria Norman and Peter Downsbrough. I now buy works that are somehow, and in different ways, in dialogue with them: Jordi Colomer, Jonas
Dahlberg, Lara Almarcegui, for example. I’ve also been producing and
presenting solo exhibitions of new works by Guillaume Leblon, Pedro
Cabrita Reis, Lara Almarcegui and Peter Downsbrough.
How would you chart the development of curatorial practice over the
last decade?
I do not have a precise opinion on that. Looking at group exhibitions
today, I realize that the fashionable way is to display a simple addition of
individualities. This doesn’t really interest me.
What curatorial initiative would you like to see undertaken? What is
needed now?
I deplore the difficulty of intervening in places other that the exhibition
room. I’m thinking about the real possibilities of public space. I also
deplore the pressure that institutions put on projects, the pressure that
museums established ways of programming exert on curatorial and artistic projects. We miss out on numerous kinds of practices that directly
question the temporality of artworks and their public reception.
Interview published in “Curating Now: An ongoing, informal report” in Art
Papers Nov-Dec 2005.
THE FRAC BOURGOGNE
Since 1983, the FRAC (regional art collections) have played an important part in
the history of cultural development in France, reinforcing the role of art through
out the country. They were created to promote the visual arts as well as decentralizing the Paris-based art network.
The aim of the Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain is to establish a regional collection of art, to initiate the public to the art of today and to participate in the development, the exhibiting and knowledge of all forms of contemporary art forms.
The Fonds régionaux d’art contemporain of Bourgogne, located in Dijon, are part
of the network of regional art collections implemented in 1983, plays an important role in the cultural development of France, promoting the development of
visual arts both national and internationally. Unlike a museum, Frac Bourgogne
has no permanent exhibition space, showing the works of the collection in exhibitions in Dijon and in the region.
The collection of Frac Bourgogne is regularly hosted by museums, municipalities,
schools, and other regional, national and international institutions.
Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Villa Sucota, Via per Cernobbio, 19, 22100 Como, Italia. www.fondazioneratti.org
Giovedì, 24 febbraio 2011 ore 18
VII. From the Eighties until Tomorrow: The French FRACs
Eva González-Sancho (*Madrid,1970) directs FRAC Bourgogne since May 2003.
She previously ran the art projects office Etablissement d’en face projects in Brussels
(1998-2003), worked as a freelance curator (including Legal Space / Public Space, a
research program dealing with the construction of the public space) and gave courses in
the History of Exhibitions at Metz University. It was during those years that the guidelines
for her commitment to contemporary art would be defined, showing a preference for
non-authoritarian, non-spectacular approaches capable of introducing visitors to their
own individuality and responsibility.
Her artistic orientations at Frac Bourgogne is centered on the perception and function of
space. Architecture and town planning, private space and public space, legislation and
personal freedom, or the space exhibition room are in the heart of my concerns as attest
the acquisitions of works (and exhibitions). Ample proof of all this lies in the exhibitions
done by such artists as Guillaume Leblon, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Lara Almarcegui, Jonas
Dahlberg, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Knut Ǻsdam and Peter Downsbrough, Koenraad Dedobeeleer, Tere Recarens, who were invited to exhibit in the FRAC Bourgogne, as well as in
the acquisitions of work by Francis Alÿs, Jordi Colomer, Gaylen Gerber, Henrik Håkansson, Rita McBride, and Marcelo Cidade.
Linked with this primary area of reflection is programming that deals with the relationship to language, and sometimes to text through artworks which are part and parcel of a
broader questioning about the issue of awareness, and the conditions and forms of selfperception and self-consciousness in a given place, as illustrated in different ways by the
work of Imogen Stidworthy, Frances Stark, Dora García, and Stefan Brüggemann.
Since 1983, the Regional Contemporary Art Funds (FRAC) have played a part in the history of cultural development in France, by asserting the role of art in the life of the country
through children’s educational programs, cultural activities involving research and
leisure, and tangible knowledge helping with self-understanding and the understanding
of others. Each regional collection is international in scope and reflects the curatorial
interests of its director.