Semblable à un petit os de seiche

Image : collective soap

July 22nd to July 30th, 2023

an exhi­bi­tion curated by the col­lec­tive soap
at Bétonsalon - Center for art and Research

With Juliette Ayrault, Nina Azoulay, Marine Ducroux-Gazio, Michelle Feeley, Anna Giner, Claire Gitton, Victor Andrea González, Hélène Janicot, Nicole and Audrey Prédhumeau.

Opening of the exhi­bi­tion: Saturday, July 22nd at 18h

For its first exhi­bi­tion Semblable à un petit os de seiche (Like a small cut­tle­fish bone), the soap col­lec­tive invited ten artists freshly grad­u­ated from, or still studying in, Dominique Figarella’s studio at the ENSBA (Paris), and Sarah Tritz’s "Art depart­ment" of the EnsAD school (Paris).

These artists share the same aware­ness of their everyday envi­ron­ment through the rec­ol­lec­tion of images, ges­tures and objects as means of pro­ducing rich nar­ra­tive and formal works of art. The exhi­bi­tion intends to reflect this atten­tion to the var­ious signs of our close envi­ron­ment — a sen­si­bility ori­ented in such a way that our banal reality appears ele­vated.

Statement

"When I eat a crispy rusk, I can’t hear the sound of the radio"
Nathalie Quintane, Remarques.

The artists we have invited share the same atten­tion, the same per­cep­tive sen­si­bility to reality, in the recording of its ordi­nar­i­ness. Their eco­nom­ical approach is rather a re-posi­tioning of man­u­fac­tured goods than the emer­gence of a new form, as if they were trying to under­line the existing, latent reality that is often left invis­ible. Thus, the work of art can guide the eye to point out the unseen. This action reveals these works as small mon­u­ments or sup­porting struc­tures that hold and heighten the object they shelter.

All these col­lected objects (boxes, pack­ag­ings, crates, fab­rics, plastic struc­tures) raise the ques­tion of the skin as a carnal envelope — some­thing that prints, molds, delimits a matrix to be left even­tu­ally. Those recep­tacle-objects which remain empty can be con­sid­ered as the wit­ness of a fos­silized trace left by a living being. But, on the other hand, some of them that are more inhab­ited reg­ister the fluids of a moving organism and crys­tal­lize its sub­stance.

This way of high­lighting a body that left its clothing or an item that extri­cated itself from its box under­lines an ambi­guity between pres­ence and absence. There, maybe the use of nar­ra­tion could sur­pass these antag­o­nism and fic­tion­alize reality. Rather than con­sid­ering those objects through their rela­tion with shared or buried mem­o­ries, we could see them as means of sharing unique sto­ries. The bis­cuit wrapper, the tea spoon and the crumbs con­stel­lated on the table­cloth could become true pro­tag­o­nists of our tales. The var­ious works that we have here assem­bled show us that reality could become a matter of fic­tion, if we pay atten­tion to it.

Presentation of the col­lec­tive

The soap col­lec­tive was born in September 2022. It is formed by 12 stu­dents of the curating cur­riculum of Paris Sorbonne University. Each of them is willing to share the polit­ical and artistic values of the young cre­ation. For this first exhi­bi­tion, soap has set the basis of its cura­to­rial ethics, namely col­lec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, active lis­tening and atten­tion to our sur­round­ings.

The mem­bers of this col­lec­tive come from var­ious artistic and aca­demic fields, such as phi­los­ophy, applied arts, art his­tory, med­ical studies and soci­ology. Underneath soap lie twelve sin­gular sen­si­tiv­i­ties and sin­gu­lar­i­ties that find common ground.

Radhia Bouboune, Benoît Le Boulicaut, Clara Cucchi, Aymeri Duler, Eva Foucault, Anna Koch, Thomas Lemire, Alice de Malliard, Natacha Marini, Chloé Poulain, Balqis Tandjaoui and Jun Zhang.

Partners and finan­cial sup­ports

The exhi­bi­tion has been pro­duced with the sup­port of the Direction régionale des affaires cul­turelles d’Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture as part of the Été cul­turel 2023 pro­gram, The Sorbonne University-Faculté des let­tres, the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris, Bétonsalon - center for art and research, the Contribution de vie étudiante et de campus, the Crous, the Ville de Paris and the Maison des ini­tia­tives étudiantes.

The cat­alog has been pub­lished with the sup­port of the Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard.

Contact

Email : col­lec­tivesoap12@g­mail.com
Instagram : @col­lec­tivesoap