CAC Brétigny

“lunulae”
Cycle of exhibitions and residencies
Curator: Thomas Maestro

“lunulae #1”
With Loucia Carlier, Victor Gogly, Louise Hallou and Chloé Vanderstraeten

Espace Brel, Donjon of Sainte-Geneviève-des-bois
03.12.23—14.01.24
Open from Wednesday to Friday, 2:00-6:00 p.m. and on Saturdays and Sundays, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. and 2:00-6:00 p.m.
 

This first exhibition in the “lunulae” cycle lies beneath the surface of the earth, bodies and minds, within the recesses of our secret hiding places. Here, the artists suggest, through clues, the mysteries of the depths.

The artist Victor Gogly starts this journey across the Earth’s surface. He pays particular attention to the way in which the outside world influences his inner universe. This permeability guides his creation of pieces that seem to be extracted from ground transformed by human activity. Some of the artist’s paintings draw a more direct link between geological depths and the artist’s mental introspections. We can make out spectral silhouettes wandering through subterranean landscapes, like spirits appearing before the living. This ghostly dimension points, perhaps, to the fragility of individuals when faced with the world’s brutality.

In Loucia Carlier’s work, the underground space, like that of the body, becomes a place where intimacy is shaped. For the exhibition, the artist will create sculptures that evoke both maquettes and bedframes. Loucia Carlier transforms the latter, inextricable from  the idea of sleep and private life, into a hiding place for secrets. For the artist, these secrets are connected to our bodily and mental mechanics, to the ingestion of medicine (as the presence of a silhouette of someone swallowing a pill suggests), to the regulation of emotions and feelings and to the buried opposition to imposed social norms.

In Chloé Vanderstraeten’s work, the body is imagined in its sensitive relationship to the world that surrounds it. In the space, she creates and hangs paper “skins” that allude to the dimensions of her body and to the venue, resembling a paper hand or, in another larger drawing, making reference to a plan. The artist’s work might therefore bring to mind anatomic charts, clothing or else elements of architecture. These formats offer a variety of internal and external points of view, translated here onto both sides of the paper. This blurs the border between the side that is normally hidden and that which is immediately visible.

Louise Hallou also makes use of the boundaries that separate and protect the body from its external environment. During the performances that activate these installations, the artist alters her appearance when she dons clothing that carries mysterious symbols and words or uses her skin as a surface upon which to inscribe felt tip tattoos. The title of the installation-performance, My own reflection, is a play on words referencing both the intellectual activity and the self-image that we all construct in order to reflect it back to others, manipulating the limits of our personal space and distilling our secrets.

After observing what happens inside grounds, bodies and minds, we will be joining artists above ground for the next part of the “lunulae” cycle, where we will be seeking out stories from the future created from the remains of the past.

After studying at different art schools (ESADHaR Le Havre and Rouen), Thomas Maestro chose to bring a curatorial dimension into his artistic practice. He trained through a master’s degree in exhibition curation (Sorbonne Université) and is a member of the collective Champs magnétiques. With this group, he co-constructed the cycles of exhibitions “Des soleils encore verts” (2021) and “Le reseau des murmures” (2023-2024). He has also worked as an associate curator and project manager at Cneai (Centre National Édition Art Image) and was artistic and curatorial assistant to Daniel Purroy in Vitry-sur-Seine (artist and former artistic director of the Galerie Municipale Jean-Collet). He is also a member of the artistic and curatorial duo Éléments partout, co-founded in 2020 with his collaborator Agathe Schneider. He is interested in secrets, shifts in reality, ruins and shacks, in what is barely visible but very much present. Transmission, as a vector for collective movements, is at the heart of his aspirations.

Loucia Carlier (born 1992) lives and works in Paris. A former student at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs de Paris and the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne, she was awarded the Révélations Emerige grant in 2020. Her pieces, crosses between sculpture and painting, form hybrid landscapes that create and layer stories that transport us into a dystopian future. In 2023, she was artist-in-residence at the Villa Belleville. Her work has been shown at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in 2019, at Art:Concept in Paris in 2021 and at the Salon de Montrouge in 2023.

Victor Gogly (born 1994) lives and works in Vantaa, Finland. A graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen, the artist and musician produces pieces that question humanity’s relationship with the soil and living things. His work was shown at Jardin du Crépuscule in Montréal in 2021 and at Beaux-Arts de Paris the following year.

Louise Hallou (born 1993) lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs de Paris, she works in performance, installation and writing. She creates poetic and narrative works that invite us to indulge in a collective reverie. The artist took part in the Ateliers Médicis programme Création en cours in 2021-2022. Her work was presented at the Mulhouse biennial in 2019 and at 6B in Saint-Denis in 2021.

Chloé Vanderstraeten (born 1996) lives and works in Paris. Graduating from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs de Paris in 2021, she works mostly with drawing and paper. She approaches paper in all its materiality, through folding and cutting, revealing a dialogue between body and architecture. She was artist-in-residence at the Anni and Joseph Albers foundation in Bethany, US, in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at spaces including Hangar Y in Meudon and the Fondation Van Gogh in Arles in 2022.