The IAC, having placed research at the heart of its activities since its creation, becomes, from time to time, a space for the Otium, an intermediary lapse of time conducive to thinking, meditation and awareness. The gardens, like the spaces inside the IAC will then be open, hosting projects that have been developed in an elsewhere, that will become, for the length of a summer, a here.
Otium#3 collects the work of three artists, Jean-Marie Perdrix, Linda Sanchez, Dane Mitchell, who each have in common this idea of seizing matter as the foundation of their work. Mineral, organic and cosmic matter, volatile and in movement, is explored by each one of these artists, experimenting with its possibilities in different ways.
Approached in a cosmomorphic manner, this matter is as much an issue of human activities as of nature, since such a distinction no longer has any meaning. Seeking consistency, these artists use experiments and experiences as a way of producing their artistic forms. It is in this way that they intend to create and establish links with the environment, as if to intensify their relationship with what is.
Otium#3 collects the work of three artists, Jean-Marie Perdrix, Linda Sanchez, Dane Mitchell, who each have in common this idea of seizing matter as the foundation of their work. Mineral, organic and cosmic matter, volatile and in movement, is explored by each one of these artists, experimenting with its possibilities in different ways.
Approached in a cosmomorphic manner, this matter is as much an issue of human activities as of nature, since such a distinction no longer has any meaning. Seeking consistency, these artists use experiments and experiences as a way of producing their artistic forms. It is in this way that they intend to create and establish links with the environment, as if to intensify their relationship with what is.
- Jean-Marie Perdrix
Imagined in close connection with their production sites, the artworks of Jean-Marie Perdrix take the experience of a territory as their primary source. In the areas surrounding the foundries of Georgia, Serbia, Korea, Mexico and for the last 20 years, Burkina Faso, Perdrix has collected totemic objects, skulls, animal pelts, household waste and other scraps, that he makes into the matrixes of his transformations.
Taking a similar approach to that of an anthropologist, the artist has based his research on the significant relics of the natural, social and cultural environment that he moves through. Attentive to social and economic flows, over the course of his practice he has developed a tightly controlled repertoire, populated by tools or junk, having the common denominator of their local, organic and utilitarian dimensions.
With his sculptures of “lost flesh” that are modeled after animals that have been slaughtered for the food industry, Perdrix has established a practice on the edges of craftsmanship. Through the creation of the co-operative Yamba-D (Ouagadougou), with his network of bronze smiths, he has implemented a production of objects that are normally made from wood, using melted plastic waste.
Sweeping aside any order of domination between cultural, ritual, symbolic and utilitarian practices, the processes used by Perdrix challenge us with burning questions, where anxiety concerning the exhaustion of vital resources can be seen and read. His artworks, charged with a massive physicality, with a powerful alchemy, exude energy and fighting strength.
- Linda Sanchez
The IAC and Linda Sanchez have forged an active relationship for quite some time now.
From her solo exhibition in the context of Galeries Nomades in 2007 to her participation in the Space Brain Laboratory since 2016, it is this constant exchange around questions of matter, flow and space-time that has lead today to the presentation of a first personal exhibition at the IAC.
The sculptural, graphic and video work of Linda Sanchez draws its material origins from the very heart of water, sand, clay, lichen and also from physical phenomena that sometimes fixes them in place, while other times it sets them in motion.
Constrained by that which envelopes or fragilizes, models or dissolves it, matter is experimented with, with neither fascination nor preciosity, and the movement is captured using different systems of observation and measurement (transversal cuts, use of a specific apparatus for capturing, grading and framing).
Seeking the point of rupture, the artworks of Linda Sanchez create situations for logics that are a priori opposed, creating tension between them.
For example in La Détente, a structure that consists of a tarpaulin that has been stretched vertically, onto which the artist poured wet clay, that was destined to dry out and fall off, Linda Sanchez plays with the antagonism that exists between verticality and horizontality, construction and destruction.
Beyond all logic, her work materializes a rare and contingent time : that of coincidence, an inexplicable moment where everything may find meaning and where the consistency of things becomes palpable. The work of Linda Sanchez crystallizes this unexpected encounter, of calculation and unpredictability, where everything topples over and where everything is held together.
- Dane Mitchell
The work of New Zealand/Aotearoa artist Dane Mitchell probes elusive zones, transitions between materiality and immateriality, intuition and knowledge, absence and presence.
Based on natural elements (light, rain, vapor), his research tends to transcend our manner of perceiving these manifestations and to explore the limits of our perceptions.
Refined and discrete, Mitchell’s artworks emerge from an attempt to capture and fix organic, fleeting substances. Sometimes accompanied by scientific apparatus (parabola, pumps, equipment for making measurements), sometimes transformed (metal alloys, perfume), the materials employed are subjected to a number of experiments by way of subtle sensorial systems (vaporization of an odor, occultation of sight, lures) or through their reconfiguration in space (contextual shifts, play with scale).
Starting with these interventions, Mitchell plays with scientific principles that are based on vision, the permanence of matter and our objective understandings of the physical phenomena that we experience in everyday life. With a lightness in manner, he diverts and reuses scientific vocabulary to keep our discernment at a distance and arouse our imagination.
Imagined in close connection with their production sites, the artworks of Jean-Marie Perdrix take the experience of a territory as their primary source. In the areas surrounding the foundries of Georgia, Serbia, Korea, Mexico and for the last 20 years, Burkina Faso, Perdrix has collected totemic objects, skulls, animal pelts, household waste and other scraps, that he makes into the matrixes of his transformations.
Taking a similar approach to that of an anthropologist, the artist has based his research on the significant relics of the natural, social and cultural environment that he moves through. Attentive to social and economic flows, over the course of his practice he has developed a tightly controlled repertoire, populated by tools or junk, having the common denominator of their local, organic and utilitarian dimensions.
With his sculptures of “lost flesh” that are modeled after animals that have been slaughtered for the food industry, Perdrix has established a practice on the edges of craftsmanship. Through the creation of the co-operative Yamba-D (Ouagadougou), with his network of bronze smiths, he has implemented a production of objects that are normally made from wood, using melted plastic waste.
Sweeping aside any order of domination between cultural, ritual, symbolic and utilitarian practices, the processes used by Perdrix challenge us with burning questions, where anxiety concerning the exhaustion of vital resources can be seen and read. His artworks, charged with a massive physicality, with a powerful alchemy, exude energy and fighting strength.
- Linda Sanchez
The IAC and Linda Sanchez have forged an active relationship for quite some time now.
From her solo exhibition in the context of Galeries Nomades in 2007 to her participation in the Space Brain Laboratory since 2016, it is this constant exchange around questions of matter, flow and space-time that has lead today to the presentation of a first personal exhibition at the IAC.
The sculptural, graphic and video work of Linda Sanchez draws its material origins from the very heart of water, sand, clay, lichen and also from physical phenomena that sometimes fixes them in place, while other times it sets them in motion.
Constrained by that which envelopes or fragilizes, models or dissolves it, matter is experimented with, with neither fascination nor preciosity, and the movement is captured using different systems of observation and measurement (transversal cuts, use of a specific apparatus for capturing, grading and framing).
Seeking the point of rupture, the artworks of Linda Sanchez create situations for logics that are a priori opposed, creating tension between them.
For example in La Détente, a structure that consists of a tarpaulin that has been stretched vertically, onto which the artist poured wet clay, that was destined to dry out and fall off, Linda Sanchez plays with the antagonism that exists between verticality and horizontality, construction and destruction.
Beyond all logic, her work materializes a rare and contingent time : that of coincidence, an inexplicable moment where everything may find meaning and where the consistency of things becomes palpable. The work of Linda Sanchez crystallizes this unexpected encounter, of calculation and unpredictability, where everything topples over and where everything is held together.
- Dane Mitchell
The work of New Zealand/Aotearoa artist Dane Mitchell probes elusive zones, transitions between materiality and immateriality, intuition and knowledge, absence and presence.
Based on natural elements (light, rain, vapor), his research tends to transcend our manner of perceiving these manifestations and to explore the limits of our perceptions.
Refined and discrete, Mitchell’s artworks emerge from an attempt to capture and fix organic, fleeting substances. Sometimes accompanied by scientific apparatus (parabola, pumps, equipment for making measurements), sometimes transformed (metal alloys, perfume), the materials employed are subjected to a number of experiments by way of subtle sensorial systems (vaporization of an odor, occultation of sight, lures) or through their reconfiguration in space (contextual shifts, play with scale).
Starting with these interventions, Mitchell plays with scientific principles that are based on vision, the permanence of matter and our objective understandings of the physical phenomena that we experience in everyday life. With a lightness in manner, he diverts and reuses scientific vocabulary to keep our discernment at a distance and arouse our imagination.
