Printemps de septembre à Toulouse – Volume 1 – In extremis

Under the title In Extremis the 2004 Printemps de septembre is bringing together bold works of art with the sole precondition that they operate in, and go beyond the realm of the image. The image emancipated, whatever its support or appearance. The image taken to extremes, whatever its origin, be it in the mind, in current events or the media. The image as model, reconstructed, damaged, as catastrophe, as fantasy.
The image as object, mise-en-scène, environment, immersion. The image beyond categories, taken out of itself by singular artists, deeply engaged in reaching beyond context, through all disciplines : photography, video, sculpture, installation, light, sound...
Placing no limits on aesthetics, forms or supports, In Extremis sets out to shed light on the diversity and complexity in forming the relation of contemporary art to the photographic image. Whether forcefull, collusive or submissive, this relation is just as likely to produce an objectified resolution as an unruly wild projection of reality.
Looking beyond images and "making an image", what then are the strategies, the material forms and the devices devised by artists to make work ? Is it not also in extremis, at the limit points of codes and means of representation, that their creations break free, become independent ?It is by joining and combining extremes (and not extremisms), from the minimal to the maximal, all the way to baroque extravagance, that In Extremis aims to explore contemporary art's fluctuating relation to the image with a free-form exhibition full of surprises and rich in paradox. One that will challenge assumptions.