opening
Public opening Friday April 15th 2016
Private preview Thursday April 14th
address
70 rue des Gravilliers
75003 Paris
website
galeriepact.com
facebook
instagram
contact
pact
@galerie_pact
#galeriepact
Charlotte Trivini
[email protected]
+33 (0)6 27 01 08 66
Pierre-Arnaud Doucède
[email protected]
+33 (0)7 61 01 83 83
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etymology & philosophy
is the acronym from our initials: Pierre-Arnaud and Charlotte Trivini.
reflects our commitment to display the talent of emerging artists, with none or very
little visibility in France, whether or not they are recognised abroad.
also refers to the way we design each exhibition as an artistic pact. Thus, each
show will be subject to an enriching conversation:
Either with the work of another artist who
influenced the exhibited works (this historical
work, from the second market or loaned by
a gallery or a collector, and presented within
the same exhibition, may be a contemporary art
work, a modern one, Art Brut, Tribal Art, etc.)
Or through the intervention of someone outside the contemporary art world, whose
work or reflection correlates to the theme of the
exhibition (a mathematician, dancer, surgeon,
film director, etc.)
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pact co-founders
pierre-arnaud (P.A)
After studying Art market in Paris, Pierre-Arnaud joined the
Contemporary art department of the first French auction house,
Artcurial. There he met his first client as an art advisor, activity
he has been practicing since for both european and asian clients.
Heading to New York in 2014, he worked for Martos Gallery, for
which he directed the new space in Los Angeles one year after.
charlotte (C.T)
After being graduated as a Corporate tax lawyer, Charlotte took a
year off from Paris and headed to New York where she decided to
quit law for art. She worked with Pierre at Artcurial at the Inventory
department while studying History of Art at the Sorbonne. She
organized several exhibitions for both artists and companies, then
worked at the galleries department of FIAC for two years and
for a communication agency specialized in contemporary art
patronage.
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upcoming exhibitions in 2016
manuel scano larrazàbal
April 15 – May 28
michael bevilacqua
June 3 – July 31
dorian gaudin
September 10 – October 16
ethan greenbaum
October 21 – December 4
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Manuel Scano Larrazàbal
Installation view, «Pantomime», pact, 2016
Wood, nylon, and pencils on paper
Variable dimensions
c Cerise Doucède, Courtesy pact
inaugural pact:
manuel scano larrazàbal & benjamin bertrand
The first exhibition in France of Italian-Venezuelan artist Manuel Scano Larrazàbal is entitled
“Pantomime”, which is defined by the French Larousse dictionary as “A dramatic entertainment
in which the artist only expresses himself by means of gestures, mimicking and bodily actions;
movement, mimicking accompanying a discourse or replacing it, which might even become
exaggerated gesticulation.”
Articulated around mobiles made of wood and nylon strings at the end of which pens seem to dance,
the works created by Manuel Scano Larrazàbal’s machines seem to float along the movement of
the ventilators.
After noticing the influence of music and the choreographed aesthetics within the Italian artist’s
installations, pact decided to initiate a conversation between his works and French choreographer
and performer Benjamin Bertrand.
Benjamin Bertrand’s latest creation entitled “Rafales” – a duet with dancer Léonor Zurflüh – deals
with the theme of the love cycle and the quest for harmony of two bodies tormented by a sweet
and yet violent wind. This danced performance, using as sole décor a ventilator and a translucent
tarpaulin, finds an echo in Manuel Scano Larrazàbal’s mobiles, through their common choice of
certain materials and their quest for balance.
Benjamin Bertrand hereafter introduces the exhibition in a text reflecting his understanding of it.
In addition, pact orchestrated a conversation between both artists under a journalistic angle.
“The tree, when elevating itself vertically,
looks at all times for balance
and leads, with the number of its branches,
the weight of its leaves and their distribution,
to the same analysis of the void
as a funambulist with his arms outstretched.”
Giuseppe Penone, «Breathing the shadow», 1997
“Giving free rein.
Giving the air free rein.
Giving free rein to the blowing winds.
Manuel’s work gives wood a bodily movement and the air the materiality of water.
His mobiles define a space, give meaning to its stretch, imprint frontiers through the lines he draws.
A constellation of body-objects, a ballet orchestra where randomness and control are intertwined.
Perhaps they display our common submission to gravity.
And also this danger of falling.
And this need, still, between the white walls of the gallery, to feel what it is that links our bodies together.
This is one of our common vanishing points: a space to be conquered, lines made of air to be built,
an impetus and a horizon to be sketched out.
Giving free rein to the flow and giving it a voice.”
Benjamin Bertrand, About «Pantomime», 2016
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Manuel Scano Larrazàbal
Untitled, 2016
Washable inks and dyed mashed cellulose on paper
210 x 150 cm. each / 82,7 x 59 in. each
© Aurélien Mole, Courtesy pact
biographies
manuel scano larrazàbal
Manuel Scano Larrazàbal was born in Padua in 1981 to a Venezuelan mother and Sardinian father.
He spent his childhood in Caracas from 1983 to 1992 before returning to Italy along with his family
after the coup of Hugo Chavez. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera then participated in
workshops with international artists and curators including the Fondazione Spinola Banna.
His work has been shown through solo and group shows in Italy sine 2011, in Turin, Milan, Brescia,
Venice, in both galleries and institutions such as the Fondazione per l’Arte in Rome and the Antonio
Ratti Foundation in Come (2014) or the Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation in Venice (2012).
He also participated in the curated sector of Artissima in 2011 and had a recent solo exhibition at
MaRS Gallery in Los Angeles (2015).
benjamin bertrand
Benjamin Bertrand was born in Paris in 1989 and conducts research at the junction of dance,
performance and poetry. He considers the body as a material, at once poetically solid, physically
committed, aesthetically loaded, and politically alert.
His works take the shape of polyphonic landscapes where image, movement and sound constitute
an immersive and pulsatile apparatus.
His landscape-creations can be sensory landscapes made of tension and liaison points, of
surviving images, of tightened dances, of oriental ghosts; nomadic landscapes for museum spaces,
industrial wastelands, or theatre spaces; ritual landscapes where the issues of origin and pulsation
are paramount.
In 2015, he presented his first solo show “Orages” (“Storms”) – an autobiographical solo show
about his anonymous birth – at the National Choreographic Centre in Roubaix and at the Carreau
du Temple, Paris. He also presented “O/vide” at the Palais de Tokyo – a video and choreographic
installation –, “De l’orage” at the Point Ephémère, Paris – a melancholic trio – and “Centaures” in
2013 for the opening of the Sciences-Po prize for contemporary art.
He has worked as a dancer for Karine Saporta, Philippe Quesne, François Stemmer, and currently
works for Olivier Dubois at the Ballet du Nord as a “Tragedy” dancer, his next participation being for
“Auguri”. He also collaborates with Jean-Luc Verna on his first creation “Uccello, Uccellacci and the
Birds”, and with stage director Marine Mane on “À mon corps defendant”.
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« Rafales » *
Benjamin Bertrand & Léonor Zurflüh
« Rafales», La Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, 2016
Courtesy Benjamin Bertrand
Benjamin Bertrand’s latest creation, “Rafales” , evokes at the same time the power of the wind, and
the violence of gun shots: shots fired at the heart of our love struggles, but also the rhythmic flow
triggered by a sound or a poetic text. Thus when listening to “Rafales”, you’ll hear Racine’s Phèdre
read by Dominique Blanc**, or Paradis read by Philippe Sollers***, or even the possessed preach
by Tamara Bennett, an Afro-American evangelist.
In this duet with Léonor Zurflüh (dancer and performer), the artist explores the love cycle through
this rolling landscape of sensations. With this polymorphous and hermaphroditic couple in search
of a common pulsation, the bodies express with voluptuousness and accuracy the fluxes feeding,
balancing and unsettling any relation: seduction, desire, tension, dependence, kindness, violence,
loss.
If you listen carefully, you will hear a furious, mongrel chant, you will see a rapped dance, colonised
by ancient ghosts and medieval fables. Two bodies in one, strangers attempting to be in unison.
Bodies like voices, texts like bodies. Two bodies singing with the same voice of fury.
“Rafales” reflects the most beautiful and yet most destructive things that love can generate.
It resembles a danced essay, a choreographed research, a psychoanalytic parenthesis, a romantic
and timeless interlude, possessing an undeniable universality.
* Rafale is a French term which can be used to signify both a gust of wind and a burst of gunfire.
** Dominique Blanc is an admired French actress, known for her theatre performances, in particular in Racine’s Phèdre.
*** Philippe Sollers is a French author of fiction and essays. Paradis is an experimental work of fiction, published in 1981, and
recalling the style of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which he admires.
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benjaminbertrand.com
dialogue between
manuel scano larrazàbal & benjamin bertrand
Benjamin: Manuel, can you briefly introduce your exhibition?
Manuel: This exhibition is articulated around the movement by itself, figuratively and literally. The
mobile, designed to be the heart of the installation, irrigates it and allows it to breath. This machine,
like a body in movement, is both a work in itself and a manufacture process: most of the drawings
are first and partly created by the machine which choreographs the movement of the felt pens,
pencils and other hanging tools. Some other works on paper are only the result of a physicality and
intense handling. The “Toothpicks” also come from the mobile, or what I have been calling the machine; the same pieces of wood are being used for the creation of the first and the latter. They are
like immobile dancers, whereas the rest floats along the movements of the ventilator.
Benjamin: What’s the point of departure in your creation process?
Manuel: To provoke a process of transformation through a daily repetition of gestures, but also the
continuous correction of small mistakes, the continuous adjustment of one’s aim on a target that is
by its own nature always blurred and partially undefined.
My control over the random nature of the process predisposes conditions for the development of
a narration within which one can lose oneself. Sometimes I start from a very simple mechanical
movement, from left to right of the ventilator, and to look for the multiple possible movements of the
felt pens on the piece of paper, thanks to the intervention of other materials such as wood, and my
own body. I’m fascinated by the act of assembling simple materials to create an autonomous entity,
a “living” structure which moves and mimicks a human body, like a puppet. I think of it as a research
tool allowing me to explore every nuance of movement and its consequences in the air and on paper.
Benjamin: I also find the idea of “poor dance”, analogous to arte povera, very interesting: to give a
voice to natural materials such as wood and wind. In “Rafales”, the use of a ventilator’s engine or a
transparent plastic tarpaulin allows me to give a symbolic matter to air, to what separates and unites
bodies. And also perhaps to give shape to the silence and to sculpt it.
“Rafales” ’s creation process goes through a visualisation of primitive images that have to do with
myths (the mournful man, the runaway woman, « Orpheus and Eurydice », a couple of Centaurs,
« Tristan and Iseult ») which I then transform by giving them physicality and spatiality in order to
compose a poetic landscape. What emerges is both a physical and emotional landscape, which
aims at allowing the viewer to feel: the instant of a touch, the anguish of dependency, the authentic
character of an encounter, the power uniting two fronts.
This landscape is embedded in both minimalist and romantic aesthetics. I like the idea that when
we look at an art work, may it be plastic like yours, or performative (even danced) like mine, we are
almost facing a mirror poem, we are immersed inside ourselves and facing alterity.
Manuel: I also consider my work to be at the border between the needs of control and randommess.
You use your body to directly express something, whereas I try to create a mechanism with which I
can express what I can’t directly express with my body. The installation is like a prosthesis.
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But unlike you, my point of departure is not figurative, it has more to do with intuition, a wish to
express reality, an environment, the relation between things, without using words, without judging
it. My universe transcribes a feeling. After being combined and transformed, the materials express,
solely through their movement, the relational and emotional dynamics that we can find in every
human exchange and encounter. If you look at the machine and the felt pens and how they move,
you’ll find the ancestral and elementary impulsions that are at the foundation of human relations and
relations that man entertains with the things that surround him.
Mimetism, harmony. Incidentally, I try to build a harmonious ensemble with a pure movement.
But it’s a utopia since the installation is doomed to die at the end of the exhibition. The exhibition
is its lifespan, during which I look after it like a gardener, in order to keep it alive. The works partly
created by the machine will outlive it, like a testament.
Benjamin: Why did you chose the word “Pantomime” for your exhibition title?
Manuel: Literally the world pantomime refers to the telling of a story without words, by means of
bodily movements, gestures, and facial expressions. It is used in theatre and ballet very often.
I’m interested in what this term alludes, the way it is generic and gives us free rein. A wordless storytelling beyond the meanings is what I am interested in my installations and what I’m trying to reflect
with my works. What do you think about this word?
Benjamin: This word is resonant and to me it reflects your desire to give life to objects and to give
these elements a poetic voice. The pieces of wood and the felt pens move in the same manner as
ballet bodies whose choreography you orchestrated through the machine. I like to think about my
body as a body-object in constant interdependence with other bodies, may they be human, sounds
or stars (laughs). Like a constellation of forces. There is always a tension in the act of dancing or
building performative forms with one’s body, between an expressive drive and a desire to let go, a
voluntary submission of and to one’s own body. This is what I clumsily call the undergrounds. It’s as
if my work was meant to give shape and a voice to this internal space made of light and darkness.
pact: What relation does each of you entertain with sound?
Manuel: Sound is necessary to compose movement. When I build my installation, when I create,
I listen to the sound produced by the machine just as much as I look at the movement it makes.
Sounds give me rhythm and help me create as I go along. The goal is to obtain a kind of musicality.
Sound is always present and constitutes a source of inspiration.
Benjamin: The pens seem to dance along the rhythm of the movement you have imposed on
them through the machine. You create both sound and movement, like a choreographer and a
composer. I listen to sounds like an ensemble of pulsations resonating within my body parts, my
bones, my muscles, and sometimes even my organs. I allow my body to listen, to pick up vibrations
(often electronic in my work), to capture this element of connection between my body and space,
between the public and moving bodies. I like the idea of submitting my body to an influence and to
construct performative ways in which I can become a body-object, where I can let myself be guided,
as in a shamanic ritual, perhaps to the point of being in a trance.
Manuel: I understand that. For me sound is actually more than a necessary condition for creating,
I like sound for what it is. As John Cage said “A music often tries to express something, whereas
sound is sufficient unto itself and doesn’t need to possess a psychological aspect. It’s here, you can
hear it, but you can’t and don’t need to describe it or explain it”.
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Interview by pact, 2016, all rights reserved
Manuel Scano Larrazàbal
Toothpicks and other dancers, 2016
Scan on Arches paper, Edition of 3
© Aurélien Mole
Courtesy pact
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CV manuel scano larrazàbal
selected solo shows
2016
Pantomime, Galerie pact, Paris, France
2015
Inexorable Acephalous Magnifiicence or How the Shit Hits the Fan, MaRS, Los Angeles, US
TRINKI PILINKI, a progect by In Fact and In Fiction, Brescia, Italy
2013
Man Uel Larr Azábal S Can!, Room Galleria, Milan, Italy
2012
2011
Cleo Fariselli/Manuel Larrazábal, CRIPTA747, Turin, Italy
Mirror project n°2, Barriera curated by Emanuele Catellani, Turin, Italy
selected group shows
2015
Ficarra Contemporary Divan, Artistic Director Mauro Cappotto, Ficarra, Italy
2014
Basti che non si sassi in giro, Fondazione per l’Arte, curated by Daniela Bigi, Rome
Contromichael, Museo dell’Alto Garda Arco in collaboration with MART, a project by
Cripta747, Arco, Italy
The Remains of the Day, Casa Masaccio, curated by Rita Selvaggio, San Giovanni
Valdarno, Italy
Corso Aperto, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, curated by Simone Menegoi, Como, Italy
2013
Basti che non si sassi in giro, Fondazione per l’Arte, curated by Daniela Bigi, Rome,
Italy
Contromichael, Museo dell’Alto Garda Arco in collaboration with MART, a project by
CRIPTA747, Arco, Italy
The Remains of the Day, Casa Masaccio, curated by Rita Selvaggio, San Giovanni
Valdarno, Italy
Corso Aperto, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, curated by Simone Menegoi, Como, Italy
2012
RECORD, Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, curated by GUM, Piazza San Marco,
Venice, Italy
VERSUS XVII, Velan Center, curated by Francesca Referza, Turin, Italy
2011
Artissima Lido, Artissima 18, curated by Perrone, Frosi, Leotta, Turin, Italy
Posso errare, ma non di core passato prossimo e futuro anteriore dell’Italia, GC. AC,
curated by Andrea Bruciati, Monfalcone, Italy
Superfluo #1 - Central Park, multi-storey carpark, project by Superfluo, Padua, Italy
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2010
Certo sentimento, curated by Frank Boehm, Turin, Italy
ARGONAUTI, ArtVerona, curated by Andrea Bruciati, Verona, Italy
SI Sindrome Italiana, Le Magazin, curated by Yves Aupetitallot, Grenoble, France
All Strange Away, Neon/campobase, curated by Beniamino Foschini, Bologna, Italy
TITOLO GROSSO, CRIPTA747, Turin, Italy
2009
Il raccolto d’autunno è stato abbondante, Viafarini, curated by Chiara Agnello &
Milovan Farronato, Milan, Italy
L’indiano in giardino, project by Alek O. & Santo Tolone in collaboration with Isola Art
Center, quartiere Isola, Milan, Italy
TITOLO GROSSO, CRIPTA747, Turin, Italy
education / workshops
1983/1991, lived in Caracas, Venezuela
2004/2007, fine Arts Degree at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy
2010, workshop, with Peter Friedl, Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Turin, Italy
2011, workshop, with The Otolith Group, Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Turin, Italy
2011, workshop, with Andrea Viliani, Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Turin, Italy
2011, solid Void, with Roberto Cuoghi and Gian Antonio Gilli, Progetto Diogene, Turin, Italy
2014, workshop, with Tacita Dean, XX CSAV, Fondazzione Ratti
2015, Ficarra Contemporary Divan, Artistic Director Mauro Cappotto, Ficarra, Italy
projects
From 2004 to 2010, core member of the Isola Art Center project.
From 2007 to 2010, core member of the Museo aero solar project.
From 2007 to 2009, performer of the Above the Tree project, Marco Bernacchia’s band
publications / press
2015, Acefalo Magnifico, Intergalattico e Variopinto, In Fact and in Fiction Publishing
2014, Eyelid Reports, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, edit by Mousse Publishing
2013, Man uel Larr aza bal S can o, La rappresentazione del vuoto, art text pics
Speciale pittuta, Flash Art
2012, NI DIEU NI MAÎTRE #1, catalog
2011, ”Minimalismo Geometrico per Alieni”, domus-web, Vincenzo Latronico,
Carte Bianche #4, catalog of the exhibition ‘104 giorni - 5 ore - 32 minuti’
2010, “Spendida Forma”, Internazionale, N°876, Jean-Max Colard e Judicäel Lavrador
“Ritratto dell’artista da giovane”, Flash Art N¡289, Andrea Bruciati
On Stage – Argonauti, in ArtVerona, Andrea Bruciati,
ALL STRANGE AWAY, publication, Beniamino Foschini,
Preso da un Ratto, interview, Riccardo Beretta, Flash Art N°286
Talent Hunter, interview on Exibart Onpaper, N°65, Daniele Perra,
2009, YOUNG…issimi!, interview on Flash Art online, Francesco Scasciamacchia,
“Il raccolto d’autunno è stato abbondante” edit by Mousse Publishing,
Chiara Agnello, Milovan Farronato
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