Saâdane Afif

Saâdane Afif's work eschews the isolation of the artist's studio. Afif's scenarios draw on ideas from musicians, writers and graphic artists – creative collaborators whose comments and input extend the arena of his artistic production, contributing invaluable new skills and approaches. His public shows are the occasion for a theatre of experimentation: set pieces for a creative dialogue between objects, models, installations, sound and texts. Afif's artistic explorations draw on wide-ranging sources and inputs, to create works that are both harsh and poetic. A despairing reflection on the state of the world, and a cautionary call to vigilance.

Selective biography

Saâdane Afif / born in 1970 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2006

• Power Chords / 10 pièces réduites, Fondation Prince-Pierre de Monaco, Monaco

2005

• Lyrics, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• Hors-catégorie, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris
• One Million BPM, Cimaise et portique, Albi, France

2004

• Melancholic Beat / Museum Folkwang, Essen
• Prospectif / Le Hall, Galerie de l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

2003

• King plants and dirty roads / Art 34, Basel, Art Statements, Galerie Michel Rein
• Memory Lost / Villa Arson, Nice

Group exhibitions

2006

• Notre Histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• Good Vibrations, Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienne, Italie
• Midnight Walkers, Kunsthaus Baselland, Bâle, Suisse ; CREDAC, Ivry-sur-Seine, France

2005

• Thank you for the Music, Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers Gallery, Munich
• Expérience de la durée, Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France
• Pantagruel's Syndrom, Triennale de Turin Turin, Italie
• Sweet Taboos, Biennale de Tirana, Tirana, Albanie
• Antidote, Galerie des Galeries, Galeries Lafayette, Paris
• Invisible script: a letter to Morel, W139, Amsterdam
• Down at the Rock’nRoll Club, Biennale de Moscou, Moscou
• Tijdelijk Onbewoonbaar Verklaard, More Talent Than Space, Ypres, Belgique

2004

• The stars are so big, the earth is so small… Stay as you are / Galerie Esther Schipper, Berlin, Allemagne
• D’un pas… L’autre… / Festival de Jinan 2004, Chine
• Shake / O.K. Centrum, Linz (Autriche) et Villa Arson, Nice
• Playlist / Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• Prêt à prêter / FRAC PACA, Marseille
• Black out / œuvres de la Collection du FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Châtellerault

Pierre Ardouvin

Pierre Ardouvin creates installations based on a specific site and setting, rather than artworks in the conventional physical sense. His drawings and photographs are a means of recording ideas, visualising new projects. Using simple, basic, everyday materials and objects, his environments often incorporate disorientating elements of sound, too: the viewer is immersed in the quiet of a waiting-room, the noise of a fairground, or a rainy day. Pierre Ardouvin appeals to the viewer's physical, visual and aural perceptions, and the affective power of the collective memory. His subjects – childhood, popular culture, ordinary, everyday people – are treated with gravity, humour and poetry.

Selective biography

Pierre Ardouvin / born in 1955 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2006

• Art Statement, Art Basel, Bâle, Suisse
• Amnésie, Galerie chez Valentin, Paris

2005

• Centre d’art Cimaises et Portiques, Albi, France
• On dirait le sud, Musée d’Art Moderne de le ville Paris, Paris
• Debout, Vitrine de l’Antenne du Plateau-Frac Ile-de-France, Paris

2004

• Holidays au Bal des nazes, Red District et La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseilles
• Bal perdu, Nuit Blanche, Paris

Group exhibitions

2006

• La Force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris

2005

• Du Bist Hier, Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin
• Lieux communs, Instants chavirés 994 m2, Montreuil, France
• Galerie chez Valentin, Paris

2004

• Of the best, Transpalette, Bourges, France.
• Galerie chez Valentin, Paris

2002

• Voilà la France, CESAC, Turin

Michel Blazy

Michel Blazy's installations are experimental workshops: settings where plants, foodstuffs, and rodents evolve together, towards an ever-closer symbiosis. Blazy's works take root in unconscious, haphazard assemblages of organic materials. Their subsequent degeneration becomes the subject of his artistic exploration. The so-called Des – Compositions (a pun on the term décompositions in French, literally 'decompositions') are gardens for the cultivation of mould, theatres in which food is transformed into the matter of creativity. Michel Blazy's work sanctions the right of the condemned and abandoned, the detritus and waste matter of this world, to a life beyond their sell-by date. Blazy's perishable universe confronts viewers with the essence of their own life-cycle and mortality.

Selective biography

Michel Blazy / born in 1966 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2005

• Vanity case, Art : Concept, Paris
• Capilliculture animalière, Château de Tours

2003

• Le jardin volant, Château d'Oiron, Oiron, France
• Le voyage fantastique, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Allemagne
• Les Succulentes, Art : Concept, Paris

2002

• Instant mashed potatoïd, Cimaise & Portique Centre d'Art Contemporain, Albi, France
• Michel Blazy, Kunsthaus Baselland, Bâle, Suisse
• CCAC Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco

Group exhibitions

2006

• La Force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris
• Space Boomerang, Swiss Institute, New York

2005

• Monuments for USA, CCAC Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco
• L'esthétique du fiasco, Cave Pommery, Reims, France

2004

• Ralentir vite, Le Plateau, Paris
• Hors d'oeuvre, ordre et désordre de la nourriture, Capc, Bordeaux, France
• Across the border, Museum Dhont Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgique

Laurent Grasso

Laurent Grasso creates films and videos, and the environments in which they are to be shown. Unlike conventional cinema, which presents an image to the viewer, Grasso's works seek to encourage the viewer to enter the film itself – an interactive process made possible through the use of camera movements (sometimes very slow, sometimes extremely rapid), achieved using a variety of techniques (travelling shots, remote-controlled 'flying' cameras etc). The viewer's eye becomes the camera itself, scrutinising, observing, looking around the filmed subject. Transfixed by the screen, hypnotised by monotonous sound, the visitor enters a disquieting world of the imagination, where reality and fiction intermingle.

Selective biography

Laurent Grasso / born in 1972 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2006

• Paracinéma, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris
• Villa Medicis, Rome

2005

• Projection, Galerie chez Valentin, Paris
• Galerie Extraspazio, Rome
• OK / OKAY, Swiss Institut, New York
• Radio days, De Appel foundation, Amsterdam
• Radio color studio, De Appel foundation, Amsterdam
• Laurent Grasso, Galerie SMP, Marseille
• Purkinje’s tree” Irmaveplab, Chatillon-sur-Marne, France

2004

• Radio Ghost, CREDAC, Ivry-sur-Seine, France
• Du soleil dans les yeux, Halle au poisson, Perpignan, France

2002

• Soyez les bienvenus, Centre de photographie, Lectoure, France
• Tout est possible, Galerie chez Valentin, Paris

Group exhibitions

2006

• Museum 52 Gallery, Londres
• Notre Histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• Satellite of love, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Pays-Bas
• Invisible script, W139, Amsterdam

2005

• Vidéo Fresnoy, productions // Projections, Jeu de Paume, Paris
• Artimage, Graz, Autriche
• Prix Altadis, Madrid, Espagne
• Glassbox, Paris

2004

• f.2004@shangai, La Fabrique, Shangai
• Je m’installe aux abattoirs, la collection d’art contemporain d’Agnès b., Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France
• Biennale de Busan, Busan, Corée
• Panorama 3-extraits, Atelier du Fresnoy-L’Espale, Le Mans, France

2002

• Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France
• Subréel, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille
• Promotion, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris
• Panorama, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France

Mathieu Mercier

Mathieu Mercier draws on the cultural and socialist ambitions of the 1920s avant-garde, in particular the designers and artists of the Bauhaus: rationalisation, the economy of means, formal simplicity and standardisation are the tools of an exploration of the nature of modernity. With basic, cheap materials and objects purchased in mass-market stores (light bulbs, shelf units, chairs), he creates works whose forms echo successive movements in 20th century art, from Russian Constructivism to Ready-made. Mathieu Mercier's work recalls the principles of the American Minimalists. The American sculptor Carl André highlighted the fundamentally socialist basis of his work: '[art should be made from] standardised materials that everyone can buy. Everyone should be able to create a work of sculpture.

Selective biography

Mathieu Mercier / born in 1970 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2006

• FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France
• Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin

2005

• A.N.X, Forde Espace d’art contemporain, Genève

2004

• La Verrière Hermès, Bruxelles
• Ceramic attempts, Museo Carlo Zauli, Faenza, Italie
• Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris
• Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
• Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin
• Galleria comunale d’Arte, Faenza, Italie
• Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italie

Group exhibitions

2006

• Supernova : Experience Pommery # 3, Domaine Pommery, Reims, France
• Same Same But Different, Velka Dvorana: National Gallery Prague, Veletrzni Palacse
• La Force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris
• Notre histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• Blackdrop, Bloomberg space, Londres

2005

• Antidote, Galerie des Galeries, Galeries Lafayette, Paris
• L’oeil moteur. Art optique et cinétique 1950
• 1975, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France
• Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht, ZKM, Karlsruhe
• None of The Above, Swiss Institute, New York

Audrey Nervi

Audrey Nervi's work is characterised by the dislocation between her conventional technique (painting), and her 'marginal' subject matter. Nervi's paintings are transcriptions onto canvas of her particular view of contemporary society, drawing on her own photographs, taken when travelling abroad, at a rave party etc. Liberty and the individual are her central themes, with imagery evocative of temporary camps, and errant lifestyles: 'I like to represent the human in all his aspects, in every detail, whether absent from the canvas or not, he always leaves a trace.

Selective biography

Audrey Nervi / born in 1974 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2005

• All the same, Stellan Holm Gallery, New York

2004

• Do you remember me?, Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris
• Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France

2003

• La Tannerie, Bourg-en-Bresse, France

Group exhibitions

2005

• Et le canardé était..., Centre d’Art de Meymac, Meymac, France
• Biennale de Prague, Prague, République Tchèque

2004

• Le Confort moderne, Poitiers, France

2003

• Limit. ed., Le Triage, Nanterre, France

Xavier Veilhan

Xavier Veilhan is both fascinated by the possibilities afforded by modern technology, and inspired by the conventional forms of 'classical' art. His work revisits the picture, history painting and statuary using modern media (photography, 3D scanning, digital imagery). Working with instantly-recognisable, generic forms and subjects (people, objects, animals), Xavier Veilhan 'models ' reality, creating simplified forms that play on conventional uses of scale, finished in a selection of modern materials: aluminium, polyurethane, or glue-laminated birchwood. The resulting statues are strikingly disproportionate, surprising, even unsettling - a combination of modern surfaces and materials with traditional, hyper-realist forms and subjects, that are perceived by the viewer as anachronistic, yet humane and generous.

Selective biography

Xavier Veilhan / born in 1963 / lives and works in Paris

Solo exhibitions

2006

• Sculptures automatiques, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris

2005

• People as volume, Andréhn – Schiptjenko, Stockholm
• Éléments célestes, Collection privée 2005, conceptions artistiques, Chanel Haute Joaillerie (Taïwan, Paris, Tokyo, New York)
• Le Plein emploi, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France

2004

• Light Machines, Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France
• Vanishing Point, Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Le Grand Mobile, Forum, Centre Pompidou, Paris

Group exhibitions

2006

• La Force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris
• Supernova : Experience Pommery # 3, Domaine Pommery, Reims

2005

• Water (Without You I’m Not) – Thoughts of a fish in the deep sea, Biennale d’art comtemporain de Valence, Valence, Espagne

2004

• Éblouissement, Jeu de Paume, Paris
• Contrepoint, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• D’un pas… L’autre, Jinan, Chine

2003

• Coollustre, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France
• Biennale Internationale des arts graphiques de Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenie
• Le Mur de Verre , Faits et Gestes, Ateliers SNCF, dispositif conçu à l’occasion des 20 ans des FRAC, Arles, France
• C’est arrivé demain, 7eme Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France