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06/19/2008: "Less is less, more is more, that’s all" by Alice Cavender
The new exhibition at the CAPC museum of contemporary art of Bordeaux, France, opened last Friday, and is in place until the 14th of September.
The Bordeaux-based artist collective Présence Panchounette are at the starting point of this artistic proposal. Active from 1969 to 1990, the group’s art is a mix of humour and rebellion against the modernist society. Using whatever they could get their hands on, transforming all that they touched into ironic and satirical parodies of the world, the group revelled in the provocation and scandal they created. As soon as they started to become “fashionable”, they parted and went their own separate ways.
In Bordeaux at the time, they were seen as the little rebellious group, shadowed by the ever-growing immensity of Jean-Louis Froment’s CAPC (Centre of Contemporary Plastic Arts). A kind-of David against Goliath. Always refusing to put their art works in any kind of institution. Thirty years on, their promise has still been kept, as their humorous installations and witty objects are being displayed outside of the CAPC, all throughout the summer in fourteen different spots in Bordeaux.
The nave of the CAPC isn’t by any means staying empty. Over a hundred artworks are installed in every nook and cranny of the magnificent stone hallway, leaving an impression of an accumulation of colour and bizarre.
The idea was to put together different generations of artists who have the “chounette” spirit, that is to say who have operated a transformation in the art world, by making art accessible to everyone, and destroying all idea of expertise to be able to look at and understand a work of art.
Divided into small areas with different themes, the exhibition is an ode to the kitsch and the paradoxical, the satire and the grotesque, the vernacular and the decorative. Renowned artists like Wim Delvoye, Maurizio Cattelan, or Jeff Koons are displayed next to up-and-coming talents like Nicolas Milhé, Perav’Prod or Stéphane Calais. The huge installations by Patrick van Caeckenbergh and Jim Shaw do not overshadow the meticulous set-ups of Jeremy Vallance or Pierre Petit. The motor-noise of the Perav’Prod formula 1 architecture doesn’t upset the delicacy of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s detailed sculptures.
Combining big and small, colour and neutrality, sculpture, installation, painting and photography, the exhibition is a keen topography of “bad taste”. Because it is through ideas like bad taste that the spectator can find something to say, can react to an artwork. The exchange can begin, the communication can start again. Art isn’t for the art experts. Art is for everyone, and the reality of this show puts that into perspective.
Less is less, more is more, that’s all
CAPC museum of contemporary art, Bordeaux, France
14th June – 14th September 2008
