Art Souterrain 2019 Festival / True or False
presentation of the curatorial project“The question of forgery fascinates me both as an artist and a curator. Any illusion is a representation and any illusionist is a painter…
I am delighted to take part in Festival Art Souterrain, because bringing works into public spaces is one of the best ways for us to question the world that surrounds us. Moving from fiction into reality leads us, for example, to ask ourselves what is the likelihood of this reality. These green plants arranged in the corridors, these ads that await our passage, this underground city… What artificial world do they bring us?
I have brought together works that open our eyes as they mystify us. A Métro map flipped north-south seems unreal, yet remains perfectly exact. An artist having an image of his avatar as a photo on his ID card is thus officially represented by his digital double. Objects belonging to our daily decor are duplicated by a facetious artist, who reveals their poetry and strangeness through this exercise of twinning. So many works spread along an enjoyable path. Some are immediately obvious, while others must be discovered like eggs in a garden on Easter day; still others falsify reality, at once visible and untraceable, like Edgar Allan Poe’s hidden letter.
I wanted an exhibition that aims as much at amateurs of art as the curious passersby, at users who we suddenly distract through gentle disturbances, thus inviting them to encounter the works and – let us hope – to enjoy their unexpected forms.”
Martin Le Chevallier, March 2019