le Crédac
— Press Release —
THE
VITRUVIAN MAN
Bertille Bak, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Simon Boudvin, Mircea Cantor,
Harun Farocki, Jacques Faujour, Alexander Gutke, Louise Hervé & Chloé
Maillet, Jannis Kounellis, Auguste & Louis Lumière, Jean-Luc Moulène, Jorge
Satorre, Richard Serra, Boris Taslitzky and Thu Van Tran.
Curator : Claire Le Restif,
assisted by Léna Patier
>>—> Show opening, Thursday, 13 September 2012
from 5 to 9 PM — Exhibition from 14 September to 16
December 2012 <—<<
Centre d’art
contemporain d’Ivry - le Crédac
La Manufacture des Œillets
25-29 rue Raspail, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, FR
+ 33 (0) 1 49 60 25 06
[email protected]
www.credac.fr
Open every day (except Mondays)
from 2 to 6 PM, weekends from 2 to 7 PM, and by request—
free admission
Metro: 7 line, Mairie d’Ivry /
(20 mn from Châtelet / 200 m from the metro)
Press contact —
Axelle Blanc
Head of communications
+33 (0) 1 49 60 25 04
[email protected]
Media partners :
Member of Tram and DCA networks, Crédac enjoys the generous support of
the City of Ivry-sur-Seine, the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Île-deFrance (the Ministry of Culture and Communications), the General Council of
Val-de-Marne and the Regional Council of Île-de-France.
© deValence
THE
VITRUVIAN
MAN
Bertille Bak, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Simon
Boudvin, Mircea Cantor, Harun Farocki,
Jacques Faujour, Alexander Gutke, Louise
Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Jannis Kounellis,
Auguste & Louis Lumière, Jean-Luc Moulène,
Jorge Satorre, Richard Serra, Boris Taslitzky
and Thu Van Tran.
14 September
to 16 December 2012
Show opening, Thursday, 13 September 2012
from 5 to 9 PM — Press view at 5 PM with
the show’s curator, Claire Le Restif.
Planned with the Crédac’s new venue in mind (the
Manufacture des Œillets, or Grommet Factory, in
Ivry), this show features works of art that touch on
the industrial world, the gradual disappearance of
shop-floor know-how, and union movements in factories yesterday and today.
The exhibition took shape around a realization,
that the famous Manpower logo with Leonardo’s
“Vitruvian Man,” the symbol of man at the center
of work, had in fact disappeared a few years ago
in favor of an abstract image. L’Homme de Vitruve
brings together international artists who are acutely
aware of the phenomenon of deindustrialization and
the past of now abandoned factories, and who view
the work world as an apt subject for an archeology
of the present age.
1980s British music scene is on display. The
musical trend of those years, fittingly symbolized by
the Factory Records label, represents this reappropriation of postindustrial sites by artists, initially as
production areas and later as venues for getting art
and music to the public.
The painting by Boris Taslitzky called Le Jeudi des
enfants d’Ivry (Thursdays, for the Children of Ivry,
1937), where we can make out the Manufacture des
Œillets in the background, illustrates in fact the first
recreation centers at a time when intellectuals and
artists were also taking part in workers’ struggle for
better conditions. And with his photo series Trenteneuf objets de grève (Thirty-nine Strike Objects,
1999-2000), Jean-Luc Moulène places himself in
this same tradition, refreshing the collective memory
through these objects, tokens of famous union struggles. Nine photographs are presented along with a
brochure containing the whole of the series and offered free to visitors.
Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet are highlighting
a selection of objects that once belonged to Maurice
Thorez (director of the French Communist Party
from 1930 to 1964, and a member of the French
National Assembly representing Ivry) and are
conserved in the Municipal Archives of Ivry. The
man who titled his autobiography Fils du Peuple (Son
of the People), and hailed books as tools for emancipation, is also the starting point of a science fiction
story and a performance, both produced by Crédac
for the show.
The Grommet Factory is emblematic of the history
of Ivry, which only yesterday was still an industrial
town. The building, which also houses a school of
architecture and graphic arts, and soon a national
center for theater, is also representative of another
phenomenon, the current vogue in refurbishing and
repurposing factories as art venues that transform
this heritage into a cultural and tourist destination.
Now a production site of a different sort, artistically
directed in this case, the Manufacture has been taken
over by artists, who, like archeologists, ethnologists,
archivists, or engineers, weigh the legacy of workers and commemorate this heritage through their
own creative endeavors. Opposed to productivity,
their pieces highlight the process of work and its
human context.
Thus Jorge Satorre, in suspending his project La
Part maudite illustrée (2010), an illustrated version
of Georges Bataille’s essay The Accursed Part, put
into practice its central idea, i.e., the part of loss and
wastage that exists in any sort of production.
Likewise, in Le Nombre Pur selon Duras (Pure
Number According to Duras, 2010-2012), Thu Van
Tran sought among other things to draw up a
complete list of all the workers who had once been
employed in the Renault factories in BoulogneBillancourt, an idea first suggested by Marguerite
Duras.
Not far from where visitors can watch Workers
Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895), a film by the
inventors and pioneering filmmakers Auguste and
Louis Lumière, a selection of albums from the
Simon Boudvin offers an update of the history of a
Maison populaire, a kind of early popular recreation
center, in Liège. The center, a refuge for workers in
the union struggles in Belgium, was housed in a man-
sion dating from the seventeenth century (FAÇADE
01 (Liège), 2010). Through a model of the building’s
façade and photographs of some of the original stones that have been conserved, the artist points up
the different intentions that are at work in the act
of conserving and, in the process, how history is
constructed.
Bertille Bak records the façades of corons, those
traditional row houses in proletarian towns of
Northern France, and recreates an assembly line
for French fries manned by children from the housing projects (Cité n°5, 2007). Meanwhile, Mircea
Cantor collaborated with the workers of a match
factory in Romania to produce a series of two-headed matches from discarded ones at the foot of their
machines (Double heads matches, 2002). His film
celebrates manual skill, just like the 2007 film by
Harun Farocki called Vergleich über ein Drittes
(Comparison via a Third), which documents the different ways bricks are made around the world.
Jacques Faujour, on the other hand, documented
deindustrialization by photographing productive
leisure activities along the banks of the Marne in
the 1980s, showing angling and gardening against a
backdrop of industrial wastelands. These photos act
like humanist echoes of the implacable typologies of
Bernd and Hilla Becher (Pit Heads, 1970-1988 and
Blast Furnaces, 1970-1989).
The sculptures of Jannis Kounellis (Untitled, 2003)
and the film by Richard Serra (Hand Catching Lead,
1968) remind us, with their strong emphasis on materiality, how seriality and industrial materials (steel,
coal) have pushed the human body to rival machines
by inventing new kinds of behavior. The Moebius
strip devised by Alexander Gutke (Measure, 2011)
introduces notions of continuity, loops and movement.
There is an empty pedestal still standing in Ivry that
once held a sculpture sixty years ago. Sporting the
inscription “Homage to work,” this non-monument
strangely resonates as a local and universal symbol
of the “Vitruvian man,” who has been rendered invisible.
Drawing on the history of the industrial past and
present, these artists sketch out a recollection that
differs from what one finds in the work of the historian or sociologist, an active, productive recollection
that tries to place once again the human body and
the social at the heart of societal issues today.
Catalogue
Out September 13, 2012
Graphic design : deValence, 82 p., color and b&w
images, éditions Le Crédac, 2012. 12 €.
Events
National Heritage Days
Saturday and Sunday, 15 and 16 September 2012
at 4 PM, Guided tours of L’homme de Vitruve led by
Claire Le Restif, curator of the show and director of
Crédac.
à 17h, at 5 PM – Hall of the Main Hall of the
Manufacture des Œillets, Elisabeth Chailloux,
actor, stage director and codirector of Ivry’s Théâtre
des Quartiers, will be reading excerpts from Florence
Aubenas Le Quai de Ouistreham (2010).
Jointly organized by Crédac / Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry. Free
admission.
« L’un de nous doit disparaître »,
Discours pour les presse-papiers.
Performance by Louise Hervé and Chloé
Maillet.
Saturday, 1 December 2012 at 5 PM
“Where we see Ivry, its roofs, factories, a window,
and through this window we enter a house; and in a
room of the house, a man, seated at a table, leaning on a
desk-blotter, is correcting the proofs of his autobiography; he hands the sheets to his wife, goes out into the
yard, throws a ball to his son, then dives into a car.”
Running time: 40 min. Free admission.
Rendez-vous
Taxi Tram
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Route runs between the Galerie Municipale of Vitry
and Crédac.
Reservations with the Tram organization: 01 53 34 64 43 /
[email protected]
Crédacollation
Thursday, 11 October 2012 from Noon to 2 PM
Guided tour with the exhibition’s curator, Claire Le
Restif. A convivial moment for sharing thoughts and
reactions with others, the visit will be followed by
lunch at the art center.
Participation: 6 € / Members: 3 €.
Ateliers-Goûtés (Studio-snack)
Wednesday, 24 October, and Sunday, 16 December
2012, from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM
During these “workshop-afternoon treats,” children
from 6 to 10 years of age become docents at the art
center and lead their families on a tour through the
show. Young and old are then invited to enjoy an
afternoon snack and a practical workshop that extends
the exhibition visit in a sensitive and playful way.
admission.
Reservations necessary !
+33 (0)1 49 60 25 06 - [email protected]
More images available
on www.credac.fr
Jean-Luc Moulène, Sacilor invitation plaque and Souvenir of 1st conflict, from the series Thirty-nine “Strike” Objects, 1999-2000.
Diasec-mounted Cibachrome photographs on yellow Forex board, 49 x 38 cm. © Jean-Luc Moulène / Adagp, Paris 2012.
Photo courtesy of Galerie Chantal Crousel.
Bertille Bak, Cité no. 5, 2007.
Black ballpoint pen on paper, 21 x 15 cm. FRAC Aquitaine Collection. © Jean-Christophe Garcia.
More images available
on www.credac.fr
Harun Farocki, Vergleich über ein Drittes (Comparison via a Third), 2007.
A 16 mm film transferred to digital Betacam in dual screening, 24’, color, sound. © Harun Farocki, 2007.
Jorge Satorre, The Accursed Share Ilustrated, 2010.
Installation: ninety paintings on wood (20 x 24.8 cm), wood box (25 x 158 x 28 cm), thirty-three offset plaques. Production: Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire. The
Bruin-Heijn Collection. © Marc Domage, views of the exhibition The Indirect Gaze, Le Grand-Café, Saint-Nazaire, 2010.
More images available
on www.credac.fr
Boris Taslitzky, Thursdays for Ivry’s Children, 1937.
Oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm. The Municipal Archives of Ivry-sur-Seine Collection. © Adagp, Paris 2012.
Jacques Faujour, The Banks of the Marne at Bonneuil, 1984.
Black-and-white film photograph, 40 x 30 cm. © Jacques Faujour / Adagp, Paris 2012.
More images available
on www.credac.fr
Mircea Cantor, Double heads matches, 2002.
Installation: video (color, sound, 17’20), box of matches, poster.
© Mircea Cantor / Galerie Yvon Lambert. Photo courtesy of Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris.
Thu Van Tran, Writing, 2009.
Printed paper, methylene blue, 10.5 x 18 x 1 cm. © Thu Van Tran.