From Immersion to Osmosis, Chaosmosis #2 explores the shifting ways in which we inhabit the world. This experimental, sensory exhibition takes visitors on a journey comprising numerous passages between the earth and the cosmos.
The exhibition’s subtitle, “chaosmosis,”1 reflects the diversity of the world and its creatures. The visit is an immersive experience designed to present a cosmomorphic, rather than anthropocentric, view of the world.
Setting aside any reference to their creators, the exhibition’s “cosmomorphic artworks” expand our perception by tapping directly into the world. Sensitive to the co-activity of the cosmos in which everything is movement, they do away with the boundaries between body and mind, body and space, human and non-human.
The exhibition begins by focusing on the experience of both artist and visitor. The principle of experience is a leitmotif in the Cabinet en Croissance by Ann Veronica Janssens―a constantly evolving space in which projects, trials and tests by the artist both disturb and develop our perception. The work uses space as a raw material, a tool for perceptual experimentation. The trees by Berdaguer & Péjus offer the visitor an interior immersion―a mental and physical experience―as do the spellbinding films by Bojan Šarcevic and Joachim Koester. This first part of the show is both literally and symbolically immersive; it calls on our perceptual acuity, using spatialization or loss of bearings to explore reality and the relation to the self and the world. Michel Blazy’s Voyage au centre then leads us from the interior to the organic.
Moving from the perception of space to fusion with the environment, the works in the second part of the exhibition interrogate the boundaries between human and non-human. Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Spiral Forest decenters our perception, shifting from immersion to osmosis, from the relation with the self to the relation with the forest and the cosmos. Sigmar Polke and Minot & Gormezano use photography to blend the human and the mineral, while Giuseppe Penone’s large-scale drawings combine plant and human forms.
These artists invite us to reevaluate our relation to the world and to all the visible and invisible beings in the universe. They lead us to see the world as a relation free from any dichotomy. Humanity then becomes intertwined with the multiple beings that make up the cosmomorphic world, and “gives them a voice”―as does Linda Sanchez, when she observes and delicately transcribes the path of a drop of water.
In a constantly changing universe, these passage-artworks are tools for exploring the vibrations of the world, in search of continuity between near and far, between past, present and future. Dane Mitchell’s Aeromancy and Dove Allouche’s Désublimations strive to convey the elusiveness of natural phenomena and the indistinctness of the elements, to capture time and matter.
These artist-experimenters―like Ana Mendieta, whose work reconnects the body to the earth―call on the imagination to forge organic connections between humanity and the cosmos and reach osmosis with the environment.
Nathalie Ergino
1 Resonating with the portmanteau word chaosmos (coined by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, 1939), Felix Guattari’s Chaosmosis (1992) and the exhibition Cosmogonies au Gré des Eléments, curated by Hélène Guenin at the MAMAC Nice in 2018. The exhibition represents a quest for continuity between order and disorder in a constantly changing world. A first Chaosmosis exhibition, based on a selection of works from the IAC collection, was presented at the Institut d’Art Contemporain in the fall of 2018.
More information : www.fraciledefrance.com
The Institut d’art contemporain (Institute of Contemporary Art), Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes and the Laboratoire espace cerveau (Brain Space Laboratory)
The artworks, exhibitions, research and collection at the IAC are crafted simultaneously in a spirit of symbiosis. The research at the Brain Space Laboratory―initiated in 2009 by Nathalie Ergino and the artist Ann Veronica Janssens―and the works produced for the exhibitions continue to enhance a collection featuring almost 1800 historical and recent works by artists with whom the IAC generally maintains a close long-term relationship.
The Brain Space Laboratory brings together artists, scientists and researchers from all backgrounds for study days called stations. The aim of this transdisciplinary laboratory is to contribute to reflections on social change.
The Frac Île-de-France’s invitation to the IAC is an opportunity to analyze the DNA of this well established institute, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2018. Since 2006, the IAC’s artistic identity has been centered on research into perception and space―from architectural volumes to the cosmic expanse and the mental space. Since 2016, the Institute and Laboratory have also focused their attention on the project Towards a Cosmomorphic World, which aims to help us merge with the world around us by decentering our perception.
Setting aside any reference to their creators, the exhibition’s “cosmomorphic artworks” expand our perception by tapping directly into the world. Sensitive to the co-activity of the cosmos in which everything is movement, they do away with the boundaries between body and mind, body and space, human and non-human.
The exhibition begins by focusing on the experience of both artist and visitor. The principle of experience is a leitmotif in the Cabinet en Croissance by Ann Veronica Janssens―a constantly evolving space in which projects, trials and tests by the artist both disturb and develop our perception. The work uses space as a raw material, a tool for perceptual experimentation. The trees by Berdaguer & Péjus offer the visitor an interior immersion―a mental and physical experience―as do the spellbinding films by Bojan Šarcevic and Joachim Koester. This first part of the show is both literally and symbolically immersive; it calls on our perceptual acuity, using spatialization or loss of bearings to explore reality and the relation to the self and the world. Michel Blazy’s Voyage au centre then leads us from the interior to the organic.
Moving from the perception of space to fusion with the environment, the works in the second part of the exhibition interrogate the boundaries between human and non-human. Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Spiral Forest decenters our perception, shifting from immersion to osmosis, from the relation with the self to the relation with the forest and the cosmos. Sigmar Polke and Minot & Gormezano use photography to blend the human and the mineral, while Giuseppe Penone’s large-scale drawings combine plant and human forms.
These artists invite us to reevaluate our relation to the world and to all the visible and invisible beings in the universe. They lead us to see the world as a relation free from any dichotomy. Humanity then becomes intertwined with the multiple beings that make up the cosmomorphic world, and “gives them a voice”―as does Linda Sanchez, when she observes and delicately transcribes the path of a drop of water.
In a constantly changing universe, these passage-artworks are tools for exploring the vibrations of the world, in search of continuity between near and far, between past, present and future. Dane Mitchell’s Aeromancy and Dove Allouche’s Désublimations strive to convey the elusiveness of natural phenomena and the indistinctness of the elements, to capture time and matter.
These artist-experimenters―like Ana Mendieta, whose work reconnects the body to the earth―call on the imagination to forge organic connections between humanity and the cosmos and reach osmosis with the environment.
Nathalie Ergino
1 Resonating with the portmanteau word chaosmos (coined by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, 1939), Felix Guattari’s Chaosmosis (1992) and the exhibition Cosmogonies au Gré des Eléments, curated by Hélène Guenin at the MAMAC Nice in 2018. The exhibition represents a quest for continuity between order and disorder in a constantly changing world. A first Chaosmosis exhibition, based on a selection of works from the IAC collection, was presented at the Institut d’Art Contemporain in the fall of 2018.
More information : www.fraciledefrance.com
The Institut d’art contemporain (Institute of Contemporary Art), Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes and the Laboratoire espace cerveau (Brain Space Laboratory)
The artworks, exhibitions, research and collection at the IAC are crafted simultaneously in a spirit of symbiosis. The research at the Brain Space Laboratory―initiated in 2009 by Nathalie Ergino and the artist Ann Veronica Janssens―and the works produced for the exhibitions continue to enhance a collection featuring almost 1800 historical and recent works by artists with whom the IAC generally maintains a close long-term relationship.
The Brain Space Laboratory brings together artists, scientists and researchers from all backgrounds for study days called stations. The aim of this transdisciplinary laboratory is to contribute to reflections on social change.
The Frac Île-de-France’s invitation to the IAC is an opportunity to analyze the DNA of this well established institute, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2018. Since 2006, the IAC’s artistic identity has been centered on research into perception and space―from architectural volumes to the cosmic expanse and the mental space. Since 2016, the Institute and Laboratory have also focused their attention on the project Towards a Cosmomorphic World, which aims to help us merge with the world around us by decentering our perception.
