Artist Artist
Project Project
Sympathie
The first exhibition, imagined by the new team at CAN, should be seen as a period of acclimation. A time that allowed us to become familiar with our new colleagues and slowly make our marks. Accompanied by a group of artists and other sympathetic collaborators, we worked together towards a symbolic reconstruction of CAN. This exhibition extended over the three months of the autumn season, 2018, and was punctuated by three intermediate events; evenings dedicated to contemporary performances. From an initial situation where the roles of the exhibition spaces had been redistributed (a stock, a workshop and a living-room were installed) to a classic exhibition at the end, different states of the exhibition followed one another. On display from the first day we opened to the public, the evolutionary dimension of the project Sympathie (which went through uncertain phases) gained its rhythm through the performance programs. This time-scale worked as a distinct marker that the spectators could interpret as an invitation to come (re)discover the exhibition. Our intention was to put in place a favourable context in which human affinities and artistic influences can come to light, in a type of chain reaction. An exhibition setup is generally a time of effervescence when the art centre comes alive and where powerful exchanges are created between the participants. But this moment is generally not seen or felt by the public. With Sympathie we attempted to reverse this tendency by stretching out this moment, by making it more accessible and by reducing the conventional experience of an exhibition to just one night, the Opening/Closing event on December 14th, 2018.
(Full program in french only)
CAN team:
Martin Jakob, Sylvie Linder, Magali Pexa, Nicolas Raufaste, Julian Thompson, Sebastian Verdon