Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox

Bétonsalon – Center for art and research is pleased to announce the first large-scale solo exhi­bi­tion by French, New York-based artist, Camille Henrot in Paris. The Pale Fox is an immer­sive envi­ron­ment building on Henrot’s pre­vious pro­ject Grosse Fatigue (2013) – a film awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennial. While Grosse Fatigue attempted to tell the story of the uni­verse in thir­teen min­utes, The Pale Fox is a med­i­ta­tion on our shared desire to under­stand the world inti­mately through the objects that sur­round us. As Camille Henrot explains: “The main focus of The Pale Fox is obses­sive curiosity, the irre­press­ible desire to affect things, to achieve goals, to per­form actions, and the inevitable con­se­quences.”

More than 400 pho­tographs, sculp­tures, books and draw­ings – mostly bought on eBay or bor­rowed from museums, others found or pro­duced by the artist, are dis­played on a series of shelves designed by Camille Henrot in the envi­ron­ment con­ceived for the exhi­bi­tion. They pop­u­late a space that is both phys­ical and mental, con­veying an almost domestic atmo­sphere: it could be a bed­room, a room that one could inhabit. Each of the four walls of this space is asso­ci­ated with a nat­ural ele­ment, a car­dinal point, a stage of life and one of Leibniz’s philo­soph­ical prin­ci­ples. Opening with “the prin­ciple of being” (where every­thing starts: birth and child­hood), the instal­la­tion pro­gresses with “the law of con­ti­nuity” (where every­thing develops: growth and teenage-hood) before touching on “the prin­ciple of suf­fi­cient reason” (where lim­i­ta­tions arise: adult­hood) and con­cluding with the “prin­ciple of the iden­tity of the indis­cernibles” (where things decline and dis­ap­pear: old age).

According to Camille Henrot, there is “an excess of prin­ci­ples” in The Pale Fox. Through this patho­log­ical and almost erotic “cat­a­loguing psy­chosis,” the poten­tial for dis­order returns. There is no har­mony without dishar­mony, and no knowl­edge without accu­mu­la­tion or decep­tion. This rela­tion­ship is reflected in an ambient sound­track which is inter­rupted by coughing fits, com­posed by musi­cian Joakim, that is both pro­tec­tive and time­less. The Pale Fox pro­poses a nar­ra­tive frieze, a dynamic parable of the failure inherent in any attempt of addressing glob­ality. “With The Pale Fox, I intended to mock the act of building a coherent envi­ron­ment. Despite all of our efforts and good will, we always end up with a pebble stuck inside one shoe.”

The Pale Fox, is a char­acter from Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen’s epony­mous book. Published in 1965, this anthro­po­log­ical study of the West African Dogon people pro­foundly affected the Western per­cep­tion of African cul­ture, by pre­senting a com­plex ances­tral cos­mogony encom­passing ele­ments from physics, astro­physics, agri­cul­ture, molec­ular biology, as well as math­e­matics and meta­physics. In this myth of ori­gins, the god Ogo, the Pale Fox, embodies an inex­haustible, impa­tient, yet cre­ative force. “This is what I’m drawn to in the figure of the fox: it is nei­ther bad, nor good, it dis­turbs and alters a seem­ingly per­fect and bal­anced plan. In that sense, the fox is an anti­dote to the system, acting on it from inside.” A med­i­ta­tion on order and dis­order, The Pale Fox addresses the tragic side of the human species in its most basic dimen­sion, the aspect that emerges, according to Bataille, at the moment of cut­ting one’s nails or putting on socks. Staging an impos­sible and fetishistic attempt of ordering thoughts and objects, the exhi­bi­tion nev­er­the­less offers its enclosed uni­verse to the freeing poten­tial of an insa­tiable fox.

Extending from Camille Henrot’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Smithsonian Institution, where she held an Artist Research Fellowship during the prepa­ra­tion of Grosse Fatigue in 2012, The Pale Fox has been nur­tured by a fruitful col­lab­o­ra­tion with the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris. A series of public con­ver­sa­tions between artists, cura­tors and sci­en­tists will take place between Bétonsalon – Center for art and research and the Museum throughout the fall; ; it will launch with a talk between Camille Henrot and anthro­pol­o­gist Monique Jeudy-Ballini on September 24 at 7pm. An artist book co-pub­lished by Bétonsalon – Center for art and research is forth­coming in 2015.

Camille Henrot, "The Pale Fox", exhi­bi­tion view at Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2014. Picture © Aurélien Mole.

About Camille Henrot
Camille Henrot (b. 1978) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhi­bi­tions include the New Museum, New York (2014); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2014); New Orleans Museum of Art (2013); Slought Foundation, Philadelphia (2013); kamel men­nour, Paris (2012) and Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2010). Group exhi­bi­tions include Companionable Silences, Nouvelle Vague, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013) and A Disagreeable Object, SculptureCenter, New York (2012). Henrot received the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013 and she is short­lised for the Hugo Boss Prize 2014. She is co-curating the forth­coming group exhi­bi­tion Puddle, Pothole, Portal at the SculptureCenter in New York with Ruba Katrib, opening in October 2014.

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The Pale Fox is com­mis­sioned and pro­duced by Bétonsalon – Center for art and research, Chisenhale Gallery (London), Kunsthall Charlottenborg (Copenhagen) and by Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster) where it will tour in 2015. At Bétonsalon – Center for art and research, The Pale Fox is sup­ported by a part­ner­ship with the French Museum of Natural History, thanks to two grants from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication SG / SCPCI / DREST as part of the call for research pro­jects “In­ter­cul­tural prac­tices in the her­itage insti­tu­tions”, and from the Curating Contemporary Art Programme of the Royal College of Art in the frame of the MeLa* European Museums in an age of migra­tions Research Project. With the sup­port of Saint Maclou & Leroy Merlin & iGuzzini.
With thanks to kamel men­nour,Paris, Johann König, Berlin, and Metro Pictures, New York.