With works of Linus Bill + Adrien Horni, Ann Craven, Alex Frost, Sebastian Jefford, Bernard Jeufroy, Sister Corita Kent, Pentti Monkkonen, Travess Smalley, Sue Tompkins, Sarah Tritz.
Initially scheduled for 2021, "Fields of strawberries for eternity", a project initiated in 2020, has been presented since 22 January at the Gallery center of contemporary art of Noisy-le-Sec.
For Marc Bembekoff, and It’s Our Playground (Camille Le Houezec & Jocelyn Villement) curators of the exhibition "This postponement therefore makes "Strawberry fields for eternity" an exhibition behind its time, a delay that allows it to integrate visually and conceptually the consequences of a period that many have lived in parenthesis."
View of the exhibition "Strawberry fields for eternity" The Gallery, contemporary art center of Noisy-le-Sec Photo © Aurélien Mole
The director of the Gallery believes that this delay could certainly involve a "risk" but also become a "chance". "When we looked again at the project in January 2021, we realized that this exhibition would be included in a long line of "post-Covid" exhibitions and that it was both a risk and an opportunity. A risk of falling into a form of repetition of exposures proceeding from the same mechanics of the second breath of breathing, calm after the storm. A chance to offer a particular look at an artistic creation in search of vivacity and magic in the face of a reality that acted as a strong emotional revealing."
A space of withdrawal
"This exhibition offers a space of retreat in the face of the economic, ecological, political and social crises that we are going through. Here, this withdrawal takes the form of a mental escape which, once carried out, makes it possible to apprehend reality from new angles. If the end of the nineteenth century is historically and structurally marked by the increasing progress of industries, a certain part of the artistic currents of this time is impregnated with a marked obscurantism and esotericism (the nabi movement, symbolism). The crises initially discussed were more structural than pandemic but were already well established. Infiltrated everywhere in society, our economy, institutions, entertainment, schools, political, ecological and economic circles. At the end of this epidemic, the shelters of fortune have not disappeared, the critical situations are not less and the ambient precariousness took advantage of these many months to renovate his room in the hollow of our societies."
Travess Smalley, LandscapeScript (working title) 2021 digital image 5100 x 6600, Courtesy of the artist
Reference to the song of the Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever
The title of this exhibition obviously refers to the song of the Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever, recorded in 1967. "Part of the theme of nostalgia and childhood - Strawberry Fields was an orphanage around which he played as a child – John Lennon makes it an introspective and abstract song about his personal worldview.
View of the exhibition "Strawberry fields for eternity" The Gallery, contemporary art center of Noisy-le-Sec Photo © Aurélien Mole
Translated into French, the title of this song seems to gain more poetry, referring us to a totally subjective and hallucinated universe" recall the curators of the exhibition, who observe "The nostalgia of childhood referred to in the song has found itself turned upside down by sedentary, domestic, claustrophobic periods, where the other and the world were only seen through a screen. These situations have profoundly changed our relationship to comfort, technology, education, our perception of reality. The representations of nature have comforted us during these weeks of confinement. In this sense, they had a psychotropic effect on each of us."
View of the exhibition "Strawberry fields for eternity" The Gallery, contemporary art center of Noisy-le-Sec Photo © Aurélien Mole
Thursday 10 February, 7pm - Virtual tour, followed by a performance lecture by Travess Smalley
Saturday 12 March, 17:30 - Panel discussion with curators Marc Bembekoff and It’s Our Playground (Camille Le Houezec & Jocelyn Villement) on the relationship to screens
Thursday 17 March, 6.30 pm - Digital creation workshop for all. Visit of the exhibition, followed by a workshop at the Médiathèque RogerGouthier
Saturday 2 April 2022, from 4pm to 7pm - 16h: Private Google, performance by Bernard Jeufroy - 17h: Apéro-karakoé around strawberries
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