Under this term, the Villa Arson in Nice offers us two exhibitions. The first, titled “The Mouse and the Parrot,” features around forty artists. It can be approached in two ways, two interpretations, two entries into a sort of labyrinth, an evocation of Daedalus: The Gesture and The Thought.
The Gesture or active movement of the artist, the creator, and The Thought or the intellectual approach of the creator. The works are diverse, and the theme obeys their genesis and evolution over time. We will mention this photo plate where the image’s revelation continues.
Photography and painting follow the same idea, the letters are blurred, will they appear or disappear? Other artists follow the same approach by recycling waste, plastic bags, giving them another life, another usefulness. Art is not static; it evolves. We used to look at a painting and touch a statue, it’s the opposite here that must be done. Lithographs, ceramics, old tools.
Marcel Duchamp’s door, the visitor enters a room without realizing that they have pushed the work of art with indifference. The work is conceptual, thought-out; this is the second aspect of the exhibition. The magic in the sense of the gesture, the movement, the technical aspect. As the pamphlet emphasizes, the fracture between art and technique has been reduced. Hence the presence of tools, machines, the artist becomes a craftsman, a technician.
The mouse and the parrot are not a forgotten fable of a fabulist. The mouse refers to the computer and the parrot to draftsmen’s templates. As can be understood, we find ourselves in a vast DIY workshop. Did we say DIY? This is precisely the theme of the second exhibition, entirely dedicated to young German artists.
Jippie Jaa Jaa Jippie Jippie Jaay is in Germany the slogan of a DIY store chain, “Do something with your own hands.” A dozen young artists from the Braunschweig University of Art are present at Villa Arson under the patronage of their professors. One of them, passionate about the history of the noon cannon, photographed this mechanism. An entire room is reserved for these German artists. One can admire their technical mastery and their imagination.
“Bricology,” the theme of this double exhibition, allows the public to discover young artists and at the same time the tools of machinery, factories, workshops, and construction sites. It is both a museum of old tools and modern art. Process, virtuosity, craftsmanship, gesture, magic, technology, project, DIY—all these are words, chapters, and spaces to explore.
The exhibition is held until August 31st for The Mouse and the Parrot. As for the German artists, they will be present until May 4th.
Thierry Jan
