What's on view looks like you. The artist uses the exhibition as a medium. Using the voice and the image, Bardin questions the ways identities get constructed through the representations that each makes of him or herself and of others. The image, that of the person, is always at the center of his shows. Curated by Chiara Parisi.
What's on view looks like you
curated by Chiara Parisi
with Thomas Boutoux and Marie Murracciole
In his work, French artist Olivier Bardin uses the exhibition as a
medium. Olivier Bardin is known for the exhibitions he has staged, or
that he has curated, and for the television programs he has
conceived. Using the voice and the image, Olivier Bardin questions
the ways identities get constructed through the representations that
each makes of him or herself and of others. The image, that of the
person, is always at the center of his exhibitions. Real time, short
time, the choice of a place, the circulation of the image, and the
absence of scenarios are some of the key triggers to the
relationships between individuals that Olivier Bardin stages.
What's on view looks like you is the title of a series of four
exhibitions staged by Olivier Bardin throughout 2007 at the Centre
international d'art et du paysage de l'île de Vassivière. Every
exhibition, which lasts for two hours, takes place in the completely
vacant spaces of the museum, and involves a group of no more than
twenty viewers each time. The audience is asked one question only:
who among you wishes to exhibit him or herself? As soon as a viewer
volunteers, the exhibition begins. Originating from a community of
viewers, the person who decides to be on view excludes him or herself
from the group. The viewers then move away from him/her and watch.
After a long silence, like in a museum, the viewers start a
discussion with the one who is on view. Through the course of the
discussion, which revolves around the responsibility of the viewer's
gaze, the person who became the subject of the exhibition returns to
his original community.
Centre international d'art et du paysage
Ile de Vassiviere