Rewind

Group Show
La Maison de La vache qui rit, Lons-le-Saunier, June 5 - September 5, 2011

Dan Colen, Robert F. Hammerstiel, Bertrand Lavier, Jan Vercruysse, John Wood et Paul Harrison, Cléa Coudsi, Eric Herbin, Gabriel Desplanque, Xavier Gautier, Fabien Mérelle, Moira Ricci

Curators: Laurent Fiévet & Silvia Guerra

2010

Rewind

La Maison de La Vache qui rit, Lons-le-Saunier.
5 June – 5 September 2010
Artists: Dan Colen, Robert F. Hammerstiel, Bertrand Lavier, Jan Vercruysse, John Wood & Paul Harrison, Cléa Coudsi, Éric Herbin, Gabriel Desplanque, Xavier Gautier, Fabien Mérelle, Moira Ricci.
Curators : Laurent Fiévet, Silvia Guerra
In collaboration with La Maison de La Vache qui rit
Catalogue by  Petit Cabanon

Is our relationship with childhood one of wonder, abandon, repression, nostalgia, a secret source, a blind spot? Or, more subtly, is all we have left of childhood the gulf that separates us from it?
Or even, in a darker sense, is childhood nothing more than a chaotic realm of possibilities, torture, devastation and unbridled cruelty? Such questions, no doubt, marked the twentieth century to which we are the heirs: convinced of the innocence of childhood, once we have come to terms with the aberrations that can shatter it, here, like the bride of a bygone era once stripped by her bachelors, childhood is laid bare, in all of its prodigious cruelty. This latter reflection represents, essentially, the darker side of innocence, since those qualities ascribed to childhood under
the tender heading of innocence simultaneously encompass the characteristic of living sheltered from the world’s violence, whilst remaining open to every possibility. Cruelty is equally open to every possibility. And we discover that childhood is subject to tremendous potentialities and positive forces in equal measures. On occasions where childhood is taken as a subject, we are reflected back to what we are, to what we adults, former children, are becoming. Which therefore begs the question: how can this childhood, our childhood, be said to belong to us?
The truth is that we will never know our childhood fully.

This exhibition in collaboration with La Maison de la vache qui rit brings together a number of works which seek to reunite with childhood through sensations, images and materials, rather than attempts to represent this opening chapter of our lives. Writers have contributed to this project cataloguing childhood. Curiously, their texts are very dark in tone or carry traces of its specific kind of cruelty.
Silvia Guerra, co-curator (extract from the catalog, Return to Nevermore).

Artists list:
Dan Colen, Robert F. Hammerstiel, Bertrand Lavier, Jan Vercruysse, John Wood et Paul Harrison, Cléa Coudsi, Eric Herbin, Gabriel Desplanque, Xavier Gautier, Fabien Mérelle, Moira Ricci. A bilingual catalog was edited for the exhibition and the scenography was created by petit Cabanon.

Download the catalog