Hubert Duprat - Guillaume Désanges

“DES GESTES DE LA PENSÉE” CYCLE
Exhibition
Hubert
Duprat
Brussels
from 26 April to 12 July 2014
Curator:
Guillaume Désanges
Press release
Hubert Duprat
Exhibition from 26 April to 12 July 2014
Private view Friday 25 April 2014,
(Fringe event: Brussels Contemporary Art Fair.
Exceptionally, La Verrière will open on Sunday 27 April)
For the fourth exhibition in the series ‘Gesture, and thought’ at La Verrière, Brussels, curator Guillaume
Désanges presents an original installation by French artist Hubert Duprat. Produced by the Fondation
d’entreprise Hermès, and created specially for La Verrière, the show explores key elements and themes of
the artist’s distinctive plastic vocabulary.
Autodidact, scholar, experimental artist, ‘beachcomber’ of found materials: Hubert Duprat draws on a broad
range of expertise and skill, from the natural sciences to industrial technology, to showcase the visual, sensual
potential of matter.
His works combine mineral, organic, vegetable and synthetic elements, forging a heterogenous style evoking
the Baroque, Minimalism and Art Nouveau. Duprat plays on the viewer’s perception, taking a discreet,
subversive, illusionistic, ambivalent approach.
Hubert Duprat (b. 1957) lives and works in Claret (in the French department of Hérault). His most recent
exhibitions include: the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania (2013); Pièces montrées,
Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis (2013); Desert Plains and Internet Memes at Galerie Art Concept, Paris
(2013) and Coral, Something Rich and Strange, at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester (2013).
La Verrière, Brussels (Belgium)
50, boulevard de Waterloo
Monday to Saturday, 11am - 18pm. FREE ADMISSION.
www. fondationdentreprisehermes.org
INTERNATIONAL press DIRECTOR, Hermès International: Ina Delcourt
PRESS CONTACT: Annelise Catineau
+33 1 40 17 48 07 / [email protected]
13-15, rue de la Ville l’Évêque – 75008 Paris
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HUBERT DUPRAT
by Guillaume Désanges
Duprat is an unusual, original, erudite artist, drawing on the visual
and sensual potential of a broad, eclectic range of materials. Based
on his extensive scholarship, his work combines aspects of
observation and preservation, enacted through a process of
appropriation, deliberate importation and transaction between
the ‘kingdoms’ of the natural and synthetic worlds. Mineral, organic
and vegetable elements are combined with industrial or synthetic
materials in strikingly seductive sculptures obtained through
minimal, delicate, radical and poetic interventions. Duprat takes
inspiration from diverse disciplines – entomology, mineralogy,
petrography, history and archaeology – fuelling a distinctive œuvre
that nonetheless eludes classification on the terms of any of these
underlying references. His work is both a celebration and a critical
examination of the constituent characteristics of matter itself, an
exploration of the ‘natural talent’ inherent in pre-existing textures,
showcasing their illusionistic properties in the form of ready-mades
created with minimal assistance from the artist himself. In so doing,
Duprat ‘crafts’ objects of indeterminate artistic identity, midway
between tradition and modernity. His work explores extreme
tensions: between weight and lightness, minimalism and ornament,
rigour and free form, science and magic. His creations embrace
heterogeneous styles, from the Baroque (mineral metaphor, organic
appendices, vanitas) to Minimalism (geometric Hard Edge, basic
Coral-Costa Brava, 1994-1998,
coral and soft bread, approximate diameter 25 cm,
FRAC Franche Comté collection. Photo F. Delpech.
Untitled, 2008,
2,000,000 magnetites, height 85 cm, approximate diameter 280 cm,
FNAC Collection, on loan to FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier.
Photo F. Delpech.
forms, industrial materials), and references to recently-overlooked
modern movements such as Art Nouveau, and its decorative and
architectural applications.
In some ways, Duprat implements an ‘old-fashioned’ artistic
economy: an attachment to beauty and fine workmanship, but also
to their attendant, expert apparatus. Duprat’s precise selection of
materials and technical, scientific and historical references leads
him to a broad range of skills and trades. An artist of the hands-on
gesture, and the application of expert knowledge, he avoids confining
himself to the ‘fixed’ know-how or virtuosity of any single field,
appropriating new techniques as he sees fit. As such, his artistic acts
contest the inherited socio-professional categorisations of modern
art, asserting his status as an enlightened amateur, an experimental
‘cobbler’ of diverse materials, substituting curiosity over expertise.
Superficially benign, not to say positivist, his work is nonetheless
discreetly subversive, too. Architect and forger alike, the artist
subjects his found forms to diverse physical and aesthetic constraints,
playing on the ambiguities of the natural and artificial, ricocheting
endlessly back and forth between the two, resonating with the words
of the decadent hero of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Symbolist novel A
rebours: ‘After fake flowers aping real flowers, he wanted natural
flowers imitating artificial flowers.’1
1-Joris-Karl Huysmans, À rebours, 1884
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HUBE RT DUPRAT
BIO G RAPHy
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1990 La Criée, contemporary art space, Rennes.
1994 Le Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers.
1995 Villa Arson, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Nice.
1999 MAMCO, Geneva.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Christliche Kunst, Munich.
2000 Monk Parakeet, Chicago.
2005 Galerie Art Concept, Paris.
2008 Centre International d’Art et du Paysage, Vassivière.
2009 FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier.
2011 Norwich Museum.
2012 Galerie Art Concept, Paris.
Galeria Caterina Tognon, Venice.
Galerie LiveInYourHead, Geneva.
2013 Musée Henri Prades, Lattes.
MONA, Hobart, Tasmania.
La dernière bibliothèque, vitrines, LiveInYourHead,
Geneva, 2012. Photo H. Duprat.
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011
2012
2013
Wani. Fondation Ricard, Paris.
Du cristal à la fumée (2), Galerie Poggi-Bertoux, Paris.
Crystal World, Royal Society, London.
Hic sunt Leones. Terra incognita, Tours 46, Belfort.
Uchronie ou des récits de collection, French Institute, Prague.
Micro Mania, Gagosian Gallery, Paris.
Sunset, Site de Linazay, FRAC Poitou-Charentes.
Champ d’expériences, CIAP, Ile de Vassivière.
Flippant Time, Les 30 ans du FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Musée de Lodève.
Uchronie ou des récits de collection, Saline Royale, Arc-et-Senans.
Ressources poétiques, un nouvel accrochage de la collection, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse.
La sentinelle, CAPC, Bordeaux.
Des gestes de la pensée, La Verrière, Brussels.
Hubert Duprat, MONA, Hobart.
Pièces montrées, Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis.
Desert Plains and Internet Memes, Galerie Art Concept, Paris.
Coral, Something Rich and Strange, Manchester Museum, Manchester.
Wunderkamer, arte, Natura, Meraviglia ieri e oggi, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan.
Ni bois pour construire, ni stères d’allumettes, Maison des Arts, Grand-Quevilly.
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PRES S VI SUALS
Visuals available for download at www.presse-fondationdentreprisehermes.org. Password available on request.
Views of the exhibition will be available at the Private View.
Hubert Duprat, Chagrin, 2009-2014.
Photo MONA/Remi Chauvin.
Hubert Duprat, Nord, 1997-1998,
baltic amber plaques, glue, 32 x 25 x 25 cm, private collection,
Geneva. Photo F. Delpech.
Hubert Duprat, La dernière bibliothèque, vitrines, LiveInYourHead,
Geneva, 2012. Photo H. Duprat.
Hubert Duprat, La dernière bibliothèque, teaching material, Germany,
late 19th century, LiveInYourHead, Geneva, 2012. Photo H. Duprat.
Hubert Duprat, Coral-Costa Brava, 1994-1998
Coral and soft bread, approximate diameter 25 cm,
FRAC Franche-Comté collection. Photo F. Delpech.
Hubert Duprat, Coupé-Cloué, 1991/1992,
5 elements, wood, brass nails, length 500 cm, average diameter 50 cm,
exhibition at the Collège Marcel Duchamp, Chateauroux, summer 1994,
two elements FRAC Limousin collection, Limoges, the three others courtesy
of Art:Concept, Paris. Photo F. Delpech.
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PRES S VI SUALS
(CONTINUED)
Hubert Duprat, Untitled, 2008,
2,000,000 magnetites, height 85 cm, approximate diameter 280 cm,
FNAC Collection, on loan to FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier.
Photo F. Delpech.
Hubert Duprat, Untitled, 2013,
plaster, flower pots, height 232 cm, length 1800 cm, thickness 15 cm,
view of the exhibition by Hubert Duprat, Musée Archéologique Henri Prades, Lattes.
Photo L. Jennepin.
Hubert Duprat, Untitled, 2008,
ceiling covering a surface of 70 m2, installed six metres above floor level
and comprising 100,000 PVC tubes of various diameters (1.6 to 15 cm).
Massive Centrale exhibition, Centre International d’Art et du Paysage
de l’Île de Vassivière, collection of the artist. Photo F. Delpech.
Hubert Duprat, Caddis fly larvae with their cocoon
(view of the exhibition), 1980-2000, gold, pearls, precious stones,
each cocoon measures 2.5 cm in length. Photo F. Delpech.
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FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS
AT LA VERRIÈRE
Hubert Duprat
Friday 25 April (private view)
exhibition open: Saturday 26 April > Saturday 12 July 2014
Benoit Maire
Saturday 6 September (private view)
exhibition open: Monday 8 September > Saturday 18 October 2014
Agence
Thursday 6 November (private view)
exhibition open: Friday 7 November > Saturday 13 December 2014
GUILLAUME DÉSANGES
© Martin Argyroglo
Art critic and exhibition curator Guillaume Désanges is director of the independent production
organisation Work Method.
He was artistic coordinator at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers from 2001 to 2007, and has produced
exhibitions including ‘Pick-Up’ at Public> (Paris), ‘Intouchable, l’Idéal Transparence’ at the Villa
Arson (Nice) and the Patio Herreriano museum (Valladolid), ‘Jiri Kovanda vs Reste du monde’ (galerie
gb agency, Paris/De Appel Amsterdam/La Passerelle, Brest/ Santa Monica art centre, Barcelona),
‘Child’s Play’ (Biennale Periferic, Iasi, Romania/Nam June Paik Center, South Korea), ‘Michel
François, Plans d’évasion’ at SMAK (Belgium), and ‘Erre’ at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.
In 2007-2008 he was guest curator in charge of programme planning at La Tôlerie art centre, ClermontFerrand. In 2009-2011, he was guest curator at Le Plateau-Frac Île-de-France art centre (Paris),
for the two-year season ‘Érudition Concrète’.
In 2012, he produced the exhibition ‘Amazing! Clever! Linguistic! An Adventure in Conceptual
Art’ (Generali Fondation, Vienna, Austra).
Guillaume Désanges has curated a number of performance-based projects including ‘Une histoire de la performance en 20 minutes’ (‘A
history of performance in 20 minutes’, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris/De Appel, Amsterdam/Artists Space, New York/MacVal, Paris/U-Turn,
Copenhagen, etc.), ‘Vox Artisti, la voix de ses maîtres’ (‘Vox Artisti, his masters’ voices’), at Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels/University of
Chicago/Bétonsalon, Paris), and ‘Signs and Wonders’ (Tate Modern/Centre Pompidou). In 2013, he is premiering a new play, Marcel Duchamp,
with Frédéric Cherboeuf. Désanges is a member of the advisory committee of the Frac-Lorraine (regional contemporary arts foundation).
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SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE
FONDATION D’ENTREPRISE HERMÈS
1 st semester 2014
skills academy:
‘XylomaniA! SKILLS AND EXPERTISE
IN THE WORLD OF WOOD’
PUBLIC LECTURES (Paris), master classes
AND workshop
PhotoGRAPHY:
exhibition: Tom Wood at TH13 (Berne)
14 marCH > 14 junE 2014
ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE:
exHIBITION: ‘Condensation’
at LE Forum (Tokyo)
19 marCH > 30 junE 2014
PhotoGRAPHY:
eXHIBITION: Miranda Lichtenstein
At The Gallery at Hermès (New York)
11 aPril > 4 junE 2014
Design:
Prix émile Hermès INTERNATIONAL
DESIGN AWARD,
3 rd édition: ‘TIME TO YOURSElf’
EXHIBITIONS OF PROTOYPES AND AWARD PRESENTATION
(Paris, Espace Commines)
19 > 25 may 2014
Art:
eXHIBITION: SIMPLE FORMS
co-produced with the Centre Pompidou-Metz (Metz)
13 junE > 5 novembeR 2014
BiodiversitY:
conférence in partnership with Iddri
(Institute for Sustainable Development
and International Relations, Paris, BibliothÈque
nationale de France)
13 junE
The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès supports people and
organisations seeking to learn, perfect, transmit and celebrate the
skills and creativity that shape and inspire our lives today, and into
the future. Guided by our central focus on artisan expertise and
creative artistry in the context of society’s changing needs, the
Foundation’s activities explore two complementary avenues: knowhow and creativity, know-how and the transmission of skills.
the contemporary visual arts (exhibitions and artists’ residencies),
the performing arts (the New Settings programme), design (the
Prix Émile Hermès international design award), craftsmanship (the
Skills Academy), and biodiversity.
The Foundation supports partner organisations across the globe.
At the same time, we develop and administer our own projects in
www.fondationdentreprisehermes.org
The Foundation’s unique mix of programmes and support is rooted
in a single, underlying belief: Our gestures define us.
INTERNATIONAL press DIRECTOR, Hermès International: Ina Delcourt
PRESS CONTACT: Annelise Catineau
+ 33 1 40 17 48 07 / [email protected]
13-15, rue de la Ville l’Évêque – 75008 Paris
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