Gaël Charbau

THE TALE OF TWO DREAMERS
By Andrew Maerkle


All images: Unless otherwise noted, Installation view of “Condensation” at Le Forum, Maison Hermès, Tokyo, 2014. © Nacása & Partners Inc, courtesy Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

Since 2010, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès has supported an artist-in-residence program to support young artists, who are invited to work with the skilled craftsmen at Hermès workshops across France to develop intensive projects incorporating challenging materials such as crystal, silver, leather and silk. Each year, four artists are chosen to participate in the residency, which generally lasts between two-to-four months, and are paired with one of four mentors: the artists Richard Deacon, Susanna Fritscher, Giuseppe Penone and Emmanuel Saulnier. Recently, the works produced through this program over the years 2010-13 were gathered together in a single exhibition, “Condensation,” organized by the curator Gaël Charbau at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. That exhibition has now arrived in Tokyo, where it is on view at Le Forum at the Maison Hermès in Tokyo through June 30. ART iT met with the curator Charbau to discuss the context behind the exhibition in greater detail, and to ask about his broader approach to curation.

Interview:


Silver work by Oh You Kyeong at the Puiforcat workshop. Photo Tadzio © Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

ART iT: In recent years corporations ranging from Absolut Vodka to Chanel and Rolex have sponsored projects through which they invite artists to make works responding to the brand, with the results varying in degrees of artistic merit. How do you feel the Hermès artist-in-residence program featured in this exhibition relates to or differs from these other projects?

GC: The issue of production is quite important now for all artists, who must decide what materials and techniques best fit the concepts of their works. The idea of the Hermès Foundation was to give young artists who are just starting their careers a chance to create works using materials that require significant care and experience to use. It’s very difficult to work with crystal or silver if you do not have training. You need to enter the world of craftsmanship. In this way, the residency offered a means for the artists to complement their university training in working with such craftsmen.
At the same time, the artists were absolutely free to do whatever they wanted with the resources they were provided. There was no direction from the Foundation. The artists simply had to dialogue with the craftsmen to communicate their artistic visions and to obtain guidance and experience. It was a meeting of two worlds that are coming together more and more frequently in contemporary art right now, and this is what makes it so important.

ART iT: In general, what kind of support can young artists in France expect? At the start of the past decade there was an international boom in contemporary art and it was quite conceivable for many young artists to graduate and earn money by selling works, but now we have entered a more uncertain situation.

GC: I think the situation in France is like that of many countries. We have many artists, but not so many who can live through the sale of work alone. What we can say is that in Asia, the US and Europe, major corporations are investing into programs to promote contemporary art alongside museums and institutions, so there is more private money entering into contemporary art. Many of these corporations are involved with the institutions as well. For example, Hermès is also sponsoring an upcoming project at Centre Pompidou-Metz, and had a sponsorship agreement with Palais de Tokyo when the “Condensation” exhibition was first presented there. Institutions need corporations like Hermès to create real artistic projects, and this is new in France. It’s important that these companies understand the world of contemporary art and what they can bring to it without being overly promotional. I think Hermès is doing it the right way, in that their support to the young artists is discreet.

ART iT: Walking through the exhibition, it was interesting to think of the residency program as a way to democratize skills that have been built up through the production of luxury goods, but it also raises interesting questions about notions of art as both luxury and as something that is inherently shared by the public. Given your involvement with the exhibition, how do you feel about this movement between spheres of privilege and public?

GC: That’s a large question. As you can see in the exhibition, some of the pieces incorporating crystal or leather look very precious. But there are also pieces that are more approachable, like the set of drums by Marcos Avila Forero. I think a condition for this program to have real substantiality was that it should not result in a group of little products placed on little pedestals. It is certainly a way for Hermès to communicate the brand to the public, but it can also communicate a vision for art in general. So in this exhibition we have a wide range of practices, from very conceptual pieces to very material pieces to abstract pieces. I think it’s wide open. My role as curator was to try to tell a story about all the differences between the pieces and to find a good solution for presenting them together.

ART iT: In your curatorial statement you explain that the exhibition title, “Condensation,” has links to both dream interpretation and alchemy. Can you elaborate on these associations?

GC: In French, condensation describes the phenomenon when water evaporates and then reappears on the surface of a glass or other surface. Freud applied this term to dream analysis, and the idea that when you dream, your subconscious tries to tell you things by superimposing images upon each other. For example, if you dream about a policeman, it may be that your subconscious wanted to tell you something about your father, because the authority of the policeman could also represent the authority of the father. For Freud, condensation is a way that the subconscious hides things in simple figures. Similarly, all the pieces in this exhibition contain many stories. The drums by Marcos Avila Forero relate the story of slaves who were taken from Africa to South America. Even though it at first looks like a simple leather curtain, Émilie Pitoiset’s piece tells the story of choreography and how to show a dance without a dancer. These are hidden images that aren’t immediately apparent. You need to think about it. So condensation is a good description of this slow time that you need to understand every part of the exhibition.
Time is also related to the connection that I make to alchemy, and this is particularly resonant with the architecture here at Le Forum in Tokyo. Alchemists work with the light of the moon and the sun, and the process of alchemy takes a long time. On the one hand this relates to the time that the artists spent working with the craftsmen, but here I also tried to create different times or rhythms that evoke the alchemist, who is working and sleeping, waiting to see what happens, working some more and then waiting for the next full moon, and so on. That’s why I tried to create contrasts between light and dark rooms, between night and day. This is the whole sense of the word condensation, although I know that it is not so simple to translate into Japanese.

ART iT: Some of your other projects include “The French Haunted House” at SongEun ArtSpace in Seoul in 2013, and an exhibition of Neïl Beloufa at Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2012, which you organized with Daria Debeauvais. What is your approach to curation?

GC: It’s difficult to point to any one thing, but if you look at my most recent projects, I work on the idea of telling a story. That was a bit forbidden until recently. Curators were expected to show artists in terms of groups or movements, but now in the postmodern world it’s more complicated, and many artists are telling stories in their works, even if they use abstract or conceptual approaches. Personally, I can’t create an exhibition without telling myself a story, without thinking how to begin, and how to connect pieces that normally wouldn’t speak together. So I create a story that can apply to the exhibition, while also trying to leave room for other paths to develop as well.
In Seoul last year, the French Institute asked me to create an exhibition of young French artists under 40. My question was how to present the French scene to people who know nothing about it. I thought about the popularity of horror films in Korea, and thought about how in French art today we still have the ghosts of the fathers of modernity in France like Duchamp and Picabia. So I decided to organize the exhibition around the idea of a haunted house where the father is haunting the young French artists. I created a symbolic house with many parts, and as you walked through it you discovered the young artists and saw how they are linked to their forefathers. I wanted the people to have some keys for reading the work, rather than just saying, here’s the French scene, do what you can to understand it.
That’s what I also tried to do here with the idea of condensation.

ART iT: You’ve done this show as part of “Nouvelles Vagues” at Palais de Tokyo, you’ve done it here at Le Forum in Tokyo, and next you will take it to Seoul. Does the exhibition change for you each time?

GC: Yes. Even though it had the same pieces, the proposal for Palais de Tokyo was completely different than the presentation here. I don’t choose the artists or venue, but I need to find a good solution. It’s like being a chess player or a go player. You have a board, you have the pieces, and you need to find a good solution for everyone. This is also the work of a curator. I hope the three exhibitions will be completely different in the way they are presented in response to the spaces. The exhibition design was very bright at Palais de Tokyo, but here it is more about contrasts between day and night, with more small spaces.

ART iT: Of course Le Forum has the very distinctive glass wall, which can be used brilliantly at times, but also presents a major challenge.

GC: Absolutely. It’s a wall, but you can’t put anything on it. This is maybe the third time I’ve come here, and each time I think Renzo Piano is just so brilliant. Even the slightest difference in the transparency of the glass would create something that doesn’t work. It’s the perfect choice. You think you can see the outside but you can’t actually see it, you only feel it; you don’t feel that it’s a wall, when actually it is a wall. It’s so rare to find that in a building. Sometimes you have a good idea that doesn’t work, but here it really works. The first time I came, I thought, Wow, what can I do?

ART iT: The glass wall also, in a sense, comes from the Hermès workshop, so it is like the ghost artwork of the exhibition. And it changes the experience of the exhibition according to the sun’s progression over the course of the day, as in alchemy.

GC: Absolutely. That’s why I put Oliver Beer’s crystal balls by the wall. You can go at any hour of the day and it’s different, so it’s beautiful. It’s powerful. For a curator, it’s a real challenge.

Gaël Charbau: The Tale of Two Dreamers

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