Published at the conclusion of a cycle of exhibitions that took place over the course of four years, from a reflection on the notion of the “mediation” of artworks, the catalogue Reversibility: A Theater of De-Creation gathers documents and reports of a fragmentary nature, as well as the epistolary exchanges among the participants in the project, selected by Pierre Bal-Blanc, curator of CAC Brétigny and editor of the volume.
"
Reversibility: A Theater of De-Creation was inspired by a traumatic event that took place in 2008: the destruction of a work by
David Lamelas,
Projection (The Screen Effect) (1967-2004). The decision taken by the regulatory authorities of the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny to uninstall the work put an end to its display, which had lasted four years. […] The prologue to
Reversibility took place in 2008 at the stall of the Fair Gallery (gb agency, Paris; Hollybush Gardens, London; Jan Mot, Brussels; Raster Gallery, Warsaw) during the Frieze Art Fair in London. It was further developed in a public institution in 2010 at the CAC Brétigny (the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny, France) and concluded in 2012 at Peep-Hole, in Milan, within the context of a private non-profit structure financed by donations from artists. […] The actantial structure of
Reversibility: A Theater of De-Creation in three parts takes the form of classical drama: exposition, climax and denouement. For each chapter, and among each group of works, a particular piece is specifically related to each setting (in turn, commercial, institutional and private) in a principle of functional and symbolic equivalence:
Dos Espacios Modificados (1967-2008) by
David Lamelas during the Frieze Art Fair in London;
Floating Wall by
Robert Breer at the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny, France;
No Necesita Titulo (1990-2012) by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina for Peep-Hole, a non-profit art space in Milan."
With Heidi Ballet, Nathalie Boutin, Michal Budny, Andrea Büttner,
Rafał Bujnowski, Lukasz Gorczyca, Solène Guilier, Claire Hooper, Michal Kaczynski,
David Lamelas,
Benoît Maire, Jan Mot,
Deimantas Narkevicius, Lisa Panting,
Dominique Petitgand, Pratchaya Phinthong, Pia Rönicke, Malin Ståhl,
Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet (Cie les gens d'Uterpan),
Giasco Bertoli,
Robert Breer, Sanja Ivekovic, François Laroche-Valière, Marianne Maric, Rainer Oldendorf et
Jimmy Robert & Ian White,
Andrea Büttner, Esther Ferrer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sanja Ivekovic,
Ben Kinmont,
Jirí Kovanda,
Marcello Maloberti, Teresa Margolles,
Emilie Parendeau,
Martha Rosler, Santiago Sierra, Slaven Tolj, Isidoro Valcarcel Medina.
Pierre Bal-Blanc is a French art critic and independent curator based in Paris and Athens. Editor-in-chief of the magazine Bloc Notes between 1998 and 2000, co-founder of the agency Design Mental, he directed the Contemporary Art Center of Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne) from 2003 to 2014. In 2017, he curated Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens. One of the most prominent curators of the contemporary art scene, Bal-Blanc's focuses his practice on paradoxes of perversion and transgression, living and object, via industrialization and processes of production. His exhibitions have been displayed at: CAC Brétigny/ Micadanses, Stuk Leuven, Tate Modern London, MoMA Warsaw, and Berlin Biennale, among many others. In 2017, he curated Der Canaletto Blick – The Canaletto View, a commission program for Easter Group Bank AG at the Erste Campus in Vienna, and in the same year he published the book
Project Phalanstère (Sternberg Press, 2017).
