If you are looking for an indicator as to the vitality of young French contemporary art and manifestly in its assimilation into an international context, there is no better barometer than the Ricard Award.
The French barometer
“L'époque, les humeurs, les valeurs, l’attention”, the exhibition of the 16° Prize Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, curated by castillo/corrales – a co-operatively run, non-profit contemporary art venue – puts up the young French art.
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- Ivo Bonacorsi
- 17 September 2014
- Parigi
The curators’ approach to selecting the finalists and the format of the exhibition presents the public with a show that is often surprising but that for about the last ten years has anticipated international success, also from a market point of view, of artists like Tatiana Trové or Mircea Cantor.
This year’s edition has been curated by the team castillo/corrales, one of the centres of artistic intelligence of the new Belleville that is substituting the boring clichés of the officialdom of historic Paris galleries, in search of talents and languages in what was a no-mans land and is today the eldorado of international collectors. “The age, moods, values, attention” is the title of this seismic exhibition.
The fine press release – that does not describe, does not emphasise and does not provide any context, disorientation and rules of use have been distorted in favour of the objectivity of the works on show – is already a critique of our sensibility and our semi-worldly exhibition-goers’ tics.
The descriptive fog is removed and space given to a generation born in the early 1980s, with the power to expose dominant values.
It is a real device that interrogates the current notion of enjoying artists and their work, a kind of manifesto that through six names, Marie Angeletti, Camille Blatrix, Jean-Alain Corre, Audrey Cottin, Hendrik Hegray, Mélanie Matranga, knocks out the public.
The six work with different materials: from beams coated in breadcrumbs to ginger pierced with cross-head screws by Jean-Alain Corre up to the strategies of cooperation of Audrey Cottin with her beautiful active painting 10 m x 10 m. While we wait for the award’s special lobbying system to announce the result during the 2014 edition of the Fiac, this is an exhibition of young art not to be missed.
until 31 October 2014
L'époque, les humeurs, les valeurs, l'attention
16e Prix Fondation d'entreprise Ricard
curated by: castillo/corrales
12, rue Boissy d'Anglas
Paris