From April 2 to 26, 2015, Fleur Pellerin, Minister of Culture and Communication, is offering for the first time the ministry’s showcases to the interventions of fifteen artists who have chosen public space as a place of expression. The project, called «Oxymores», will allow the general public to discover the works of L'Atlas, Combo, Eltono, Jean Faucheur, Honet, Koralie, Lek et Sowat, Marko 93, O'Clock, OX, Surfil, Thom Thom, Jacques Villeglé and Gérard Zlotykamien. She presented on this occasion a new ambition for urban art and young creation.
By opening her ministry to artists, Fleur Pellerin, Minister of Culture and Communication, reaffirms her commitment to all artistic expressions and to their dissemination to the widest possible audience, including youth. It wishes to conduct a proactive policy in favour of young creation and urban art that will mobilize and sensitize all local authorities, cultural institutions and partners to support artistic practices in all their diversity. The Ministry of Culture and Communication thus intends to give full support to artists and to the recognition of their work and their modes of expression. The Minister announced the upcoming launch of a call for projects to invite ten artists to create murals in situ throughout France in 2016, as part of the public order.
The exhibition/intervention «Oxymores», proposed by the artistic curators Élise Herszkowicz (Art Azoï, Paris) and David Demougeot (Bien Urbain, Besançon) takes place ephemerally on all the windows of the building called «Bons-Enfants», headquarters of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. The fifteen artists were invited to intervene along the streets of Saint-Honoré, Bons-Enfants and Croix-des-Petits-Champs. They created works on the building using markers, aerosols, adhesive tape, collages or posters. A video showing their interventions will be streamed on a screen in the department’s lobby (182 Saint-Honoré Street), allowing the public to be as close as possible to the artistic creation process.
Around the project
Meetings and debates will be organized with artists, project leaders, art historians and critics, elected officials and heads of institutions to discuss the place of art in the public space and the accompaniment of these forms of expression. School audiences will be able to take part in visits to the Ministry to exchange their impressions of urban art with the exhibition’s curators and artists.