Sophie Nys
dal 28/2/2015 al 16/5/2015
Segnalato da
28/2/2015
Sophie Nys
Crac Alsace, Altkirch
For the first time in an exhibition, the artist brings in her original sources, at once a source of inspiration for her work, and a source in the historical sense of the term.
Curated by: Elfi Turpin
in Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, ein
Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett...here I
am endlessly repeating this sentence which is the title of this solo show
of Sophie Nys, as if the better to grasp its mechanics and substance.
For this statement, which not only acts as an image, informs both the
challenges of Sophie Nys’ work in general and the preoccupations at work
in this exhibition in particular. Ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein Brett, which
literally means “a table without bread is a board”, is the adaptation
of a Russian saying which deals with both the object in its simplest
material apparatus and the history it raises. Ein Tisch ohne Brot ist ein
Brett, and, you see, the words are pleasant to utter, is therefore this
relentless conceptual game, at once economical and rudimentary, which
addresses a whole swathe of history, that of bread and its absence, and
by extension the history of the crises and famines that have traversed
Europe.
For if Sophie Nys is interested in history, and how it is manufactured and
represented, she invariably approaches it through sources—objects,
archives, documents—where she inquisitively observes the negative
space, almost the unconscious and the repressed, operating by
association of ideas and formal analogies. So, strictly speaking, it is not
a matter of bread in this show. Rather, it involves its absence in periods
of crisis, for example during the wars that have raged in this part of the
world—Altkirch and its surroundings, where the art centre is located
today—and the alternative recipes or practices which the inhabitants of
this part of the world have managed to invent.
In particular, Sophie Nys has focused on a certain number of objects
and works which have to do with the region’s industrial past and more
especially on the figure of the worker—a social and political body which
she likens to documents coming from other geographical, historical and
artistic fields. In this way, and for the first time in an exhibition, the artist
brings in her original sources—at once a source of inspiration for her
work, and a source in the historical sense of the term—which she has
collected in various museums and sites in the region, and which she
updates in arrangements and assemblages of critical gestures and forms.
So the body of the Schweissdissi, “the man who sweats” will rub
shoulders indirectly with the figures of Patti Smith, Joseph Beuys and
Carl Andre, whose 120 heat-resistant bricks arranged in a rectangle
will encounter the damaged fingers of workers whose hands are caught
in the production tool, which they never laid their hands on, which will
meet the sad gaze of Dumbo, a tiny navvy, the underground journeys of
Herculean miners, an industrial painting, a punitive sculpture, ingenious
tables-cum-chairs or clandestine popular practices, and together produce
unlikely sequences of events.
Image: Sophie Nys, Lawn Bag, 2013, Plastic bag, administratif rubbish, Variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist
Press Contact:
Richard Neyroud - r.neyroud@cracalsace.com
Opening: Sunday 1st of March at 11.30 am
CRAC ALSACE
18 rue du château
F-68130 ALTKIRCH
Open Tuesday to Friday
10:00AM-6:00PM
and weekends
2PM-6PM