IMAGES DU LABYRINTHE : L’ATELIER SURRÉALISTE. CARTE BLANCHE À AUDREY GUTTMAN
Christie’s, Paris
September 12th to October 3rd, 2024
Carte blanche at Christie’s Paris to mark the centenary of the Surrealist movement.
Christie's présente Images du Labyrinthe. L'Atelier surréaliste - Carte blanche à Audrey Guttman, une exposition-vente conçue par l'artiste multidisciplinaire Audrey Guttman pour célébrer le centième anniversaire de la publication du Manifeste du Surréalisme par André Breton.
Sous son commissariat, le parcours d'exposition trace en dix chapitres un chemin dans le labyrinthe surréaliste, autour d’une installation éphémère inspirée de l'atelier d'André Breton. Les "images du labyrinthe" (Roger Caillois) émaillent la carte d'un territoire vivant pour l’artiste, qui dévoile une cartographie intime constituée d’oeuvres, manuscrits et livres mais aussi d’objets et de reliques, déroulant le fil d’Ariane d’une exploration ouverte à tous.
L'exposition est également le site d'un jeu proposé sous la forme d'une installation labyrinthique engageant à un itinéraire guidé par le hasard. Il est en cela le jumeau du Surréalisme même, qui semble dirigé par la fantaisie mais se superpose à un chemin initiatique nous amenant à penser autrement l’existence. Au coeur de toutes nos contradictions, dont celle même de célébrer le stupéfiant surréaliste, le labyrinthe modélise la coexistence de la liberté et de la contrainte, du début et de la fin, traçant les contours d’un dédale que nous n’avons, cent ans plus tard, jamais fini d’arpenter.
Exposition du 12 septembre au 2 octobre 2024
Du lundi au samedi de 10h à 18h, et les dimanches 22 et 29 septembre de 14h à 18h.
Jusqu'au 2 octobre inclus.
Entrée gratuite et sans réservation.
Christie's Paris, 9 avenue Matignon, Paris
Artistes et écrivains présentés
Adolphe Acker, Flora Acker, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, André Breton, Camille Bryen, Claude Cahun, Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Lise Deharme, Paul Delvaux, Cicero Dias, Oscar Dominguez, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Jane Graverol, Tom Gut, Valentine Hugo, Nicola L, Wifredo Lam, Jacqueline Lamba, Lautréamont, René Magritte, Man Ray, Marcel Mariën, André Masson, Max Morise, Georges Mouton, Paul Nougé, Gaston Paris, Wolfgang Paalen, Benjamin Péret, Francis Picabia, Maurice Rapin, Pierre Roy, Yves Tanguy, Raoul Ubac, Suzanne Van Damme, Remedios Varo, Unica Zürn.
Le Mur de l’Atelier / Le Grand Jeu / Nuits Partagées / Trajectoires du Rêve / L’Œil à l’état sauvage
To mark the Surrealist Centenary, Christie's has invited the artist Audrey Guttman to design a “carte blanche” exhibition celebrating Surrealism and placing it in resonance with her own work. The exhibition centers on the mythical site of the Surrealist atelier, where the “images of the labyrinth” (Roger Caillois) illuminate the map of an inexhaustible territory, one that is essential to the artist. Under her curation, the exhibition traces a singular and personal path through the Surrealist maze, with ten chapters evoking founding themes and visions of the Surrealist dream.
An installation created by the artist pays homage to her studio, “a refuge from all the machinations of the world” (Gracq), where creation can proceed by trial and error, by epiphanies and analogies, through the creation of intimate, living cosmogonies. This is the surrealist furnace par excellence, where boundaries are resolutely porous between collecting and creating, thought and poetry, words and images. As reinvented by André Breton, the wall no longer confines us, but liberates. It is this absolute freedom that the artist wishes to show, through the principles of collage and assemblage that are at the very core of the surrealist logic.
From Oceanic sculptures to Lautréamont's poems, the exhibition highlights the movement's sources of inspiration, and pays tribute to figures ranging from André Breton to Valentine Hugo, Hans Bellmer to Leonora Carrington, Jane Graverol to René Magritte. Tracing a path through this forest of works, manuscripts, relics and objects, Guttman exhorts us to find our own way through the maze of possibilities, overcoming disorientation and frustration. In the gigantic magnetic field of inner life, getting lost is getting found.
Le Jeu du Labyrinthe / Mythologies / Chimères / Jadis et Naguère
Christie's présente Images du Labyrinthe. L'Atelier surréaliste - Carte blanche à Audrey Guttman, une exposition-vente conçue par l'artiste multidisciplinaire Audrey Guttman pour célébrer le centième anniversaire de la publication du Manifeste du Surréalisme par André Breton.
Sous son commissariat, le parcours d'exposition trace en dix chapitres un chemin dans le labyrinthe surréaliste, autour d’une installation éphémère inspirée de l'atelier d'André Breton. Les "images du labyrinthe" (Roger Caillois) émaillent la carte d'un territoire vivant pour l’artiste, qui dévoile une cartographie intime constituée d’oeuvres, manuscrits et livres mais aussi d’objets et de reliques, déroulant le fil d’Ariane d’une exploration ouverte à tous.
L'exposition est également le site d'un jeu proposé sous la forme d'une installation labyrinthique engageant à un itinéraire guidé par le hasard. Il est en cela le jumeau du Surréalisme même, qui semble dirigé par la fantaisie mais se superpose à un chemin initiatique nous amenant à penser autrement l’existence. Au coeur de toutes nos contradictions, dont celle même de célébrer le stupéfiant surréaliste, le labyrinthe modélise la coexistence de la liberté et de la contrainte, du début et de la fin, traçant les contours d’un dédale que nous n’avons, cent ans plus tard, jamais fini d’arpenter.
Film (2 min) par Samuel Landée :
LE SURRÉALISME A CENT ANS. Qu’est-ce que le surréalisme? Coït de formes, explosion des limites, feu de joie : c’est l’incongru triomphant, couché dans un lit que personne n’a fait pour lui. C’est le lait des rêves où je m’abreuve, la couleur du parapluie qui m’abrite, le vertige borgésien d’où je crée. Voilà l’énigme posée. Comment s’en approcher ?
Tout autour du mot, du beau nom grave de Surréalisme, il y a des jardins touffus avec des dégagements dans lesquels se faufiler : l’une de ces percées pourrait être un vers de poésie involontaire, une autre, l’ombre d’une petite fille dans une ville dépeuplée, une autre encore — empruntons des trouées de plus en plus étroites — des veines roses sur une paire de gants bleus. Ce ballet de fantômes renvoie, à son tour, à ces autres catacombes que tissent les pensées sans langage et les images 100 têtes.
Le creuset de cette bacchanale, c’est — au cœur du labyrinthe — l’atelier. Espace inventaire ou inventé, c’est la cache où ces grands brasseurs des mots et des images ont tapé dans l’onde fertile, formant des ricochets hilares qui frémissent jusqu’à nous. Microcosme, ombilic, vase communicant de l’atelier, poussons la porte, on la cherchait, elle est là : la forêt, cachée dans la femme.
Audrey Guttman
Works on view (selected)
"Ce qui surgit dans le labyrinthe disparaît, ou bien s'égare. On tient le hasard fermement dans une main qui tremble, et on rencontre la perte, le jeu, l'amour, le désir, la lumière, l'ombre. On n'arrive jamais : on est dévoré, et on recommence."
- Extrait d'un des poèmes du livre
Press:
Mentioned in Le Figaro 02/09
Mentioned in Le Figaro 13/09
Mentioned in Christie’s Highlights
Article in What We Adore
Announced in Le Figaro and Enchère magazine
LA FEMME 100 CHAMBRES
Hangar Brussels
Solo project "La Femme 100 chambres" in "UNIQUE: Beyond photography" at HANGAR in Brussels.
Group exhibition from April 19th to June 8th, 2024
"La Femme 100 Chambres" is conceived in loosely narrative form, reprising the equivocal title of Ernst's early collage novel, "La femme 100 têtes". Which is it, a hundred rooms or none at all? Is the Lady of the house present? Or does Alice not live here anymore? Gliding from one image to another, the titular protagonist repeatedly escapes, imprinting her silhouette on a rock, a curtain or a doily, before slipping out through a life-size fabric mirror. Through the keyhole, there she is: is she grimacing with sorrow or ecstasy? In this game of hide-and-seek between light and shadow, between the object and its image, she invites us to play with her — and with the very idea of reality, which is, perhaps, the only subject of photography.
Press:
ART BRUSSELS : 40 YEARS
Galerie Mighela Shama
Group exhibition from April 26th to 28th 2024, Booth 6A-32
DOLL HOUSE BLUES
Galerie Mighela Shama
Solo exhibition from January 19th to February 22nd 2024
Public art talk during Art Genève on January 25th with Séverine Redon
"With Doll House Blues, Audrey Guttman offers an elaborate body of new work that keenly situates “the doll house” as a figurative site of intimacy and spectacle, ultimately dissecting the mechanisms of beauty and façade. Guttman wields blue cyanotype prints, collage, mixed media and sculpture to challenge our fractured performances of self—positioning “the doll house” as the metaphorical nucleus where these multiplicities converge. The show asks: How do we flee the confining “houses” of self, of performance, of scrutiny? It also considers the prospect of escape, wondering: How might we subvert those boundaries and smash their walls?"
- Excerpt from the text by Leila Renee
TSIMTSOUM
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels
Solo exhibition on the occasion of Art Brussels 2023, from April 19th to May 6th 2023
"Audrey Guttman’s new body of work conceptually and formally explores the paradoxes inherent to the notion of tsimtsoum to interrogate the very processes of artistic creation and spiritual awakening: the necessary dualities of absence and presence, contraction and creation, darkness and light. The tripartite cycle of revelation-destruction-repair is echoed again and again across religions and cultures, from Zen Buddhism to Jungian psychology. Here, it finds a near perfect analogy in the material process of collage, in which an infinite sea of symbols must be discerningly sifted through, cut apart, and reassembled to reveal new meaning."
-Excerpt from the text by Melanie Scheiner
MINUTIAE
Galerie Mighela Shama
Four-artist show
Exhibition from May 5th to June 22nd 2022
"Beyond the realm of the conscious, one’s mind is drawn beyond the realm of the conscious, soaring in the presence of […] Audrey Guttman’s subtle collages, denouncing the world’s difficult truths. A detail is never accidental, and never innocuous, when framed with intention. […] Reality accommodates the meaningless detail; in art, insignificance does not exist. The artist’s choice of the scene, person, or object that she will isolate, contain, and zoom in upon stems from her desire to kindle that “pleasure of the detail” so well described by the historian Daniel Arasse."
- Excerpt from the text by Béatrice de Rochebouët
I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR
Ketabi Projects
Solo exhibition from January 3rd to February 22nd 2022
Article in Connaissance des Arts
"By associating seemingly opposed visions- in the same way as a Baudelairian correspondence or a synesthesia -the artist cracks open meaning, she multiplies it. And allows the viewer to find his or her own troubling reflection, to associate with it a deep emotional state, a secret shape, an intimate hue. Thus, each glance will find its unique and singular counterpart. Like a bit of one’s mental life, one’s existence within - to use an expression by Michaux which Audrey Guttman is fond of - and which reveals itself in her work..."
- Excerpt from the text by Boris Bergmann
WHERE THE YEARS DO NOT TURN THE PAGES
Il Salviatino, Florence
Solo exhibition from June to October 2021 at Il Salviatino, a 14th century Palazzo overlooking Florence.
“The artist gives us access to a new space-time, free of the usual constraints of “present, past, future” and “here and there”, leading us to envision another possible interpretation, suspended and dreamlike: where the years do not turn the pages. The title lends the project its name, not only by referencing the artist’s daily ritual of turning pages to select the images that emerge, but also the re-interpreting of the Florentine imagery and political history. In his famous Stanze, Poliziano described the kingdom of Venus in gauzy verses that inspired Sandro Botticelli to famously depict the goddess. Audrey Guttman addresses the cracks in the traditional depiction of femininity and of the city as its avatar, bringing to life a new kingdom in which everything is free, subverted, exchanged, and rendered cheekily metaphorical.”
-Excerpt from the text by Maddalena Pelù
AL DI LÀ DEL VOLTO
Futura, Pietrasanta
Duo exhibition from 10th July to 7th August, 2021, with Jiří Kolář (1914-2002), a Surrealist Czech artist, poet and writer.
"In the middle ground where worlds collide, poetry lives according to the same logic as images. A logic of contingency according to which every image, every poem defines its own principle through the encounters of life. According to Jiří Kolář, with whose works Guttman dialogues, a collage demands its own composition in the same manner as a poem. Life, too, Kolář wrote, is full of eruptions, crystallizations and landslides. There is always something in it that explodes or implodes, that steps out of the picture or withdraws in it. An unpredictable je-ne-sais-quoi, as in dreams, which are there to be dreamed as life is there to be lived."
-Excerpt from the text by Chiara Vecchiarelli
Chiara Vecchiarelli is the curator of the exhibition. A lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, she is the author of numerous essays, articles and books with Italian and international publishers, selected for the Furla Prize (2015) and the Maxxi-Bulgari Prize (2017). She is a member of the coordinating committee of the Forum of Italian Contemporary Art.
