Itinéraire bis

Collective Exhibition
From June 25th to September 18th 2011

With “Itinéraire bis”, MAC/VAL presents an exhibition making us dream of upcoming holidays. With seventy works from the Mac/Val collection fund, this “itinerary” is designed to give visitors an opportunity to take some days off, ride away somewhere new and play truant for a while … This collective exhibit, created by Frank Lamy and Julien Blanpied, is both full of ambiance and poetic, with a string of paintings and a collection of holiday “postcards”. The curators invite visitors to mentally travel throughout the exhibit, calmly strolling along this adventure with interspersed with aesthetically dreamy themes.

A word from the Exhibition Curators

In 1955, Charles Trenet sang about happiness, love and nonchalance driving along the Nationale 7: “Of all the roads in France, Europe/The one I love the most is the one that leads/By car or by hitchhiking/Towards the riverbanks of the Midi/Nationale Sept/You have to take it when going to Rome or Sète/Whether there are two three four five six or seven people/It’s just the best road around”.

In 1989, the Négresses Vertes surprised everyone with: “Here’s the summer, I can see the sun/The clouds go away and the sky clears up/And in my head there’s a buzzing/The bees/I can hear life’s pleasures roaring/Here’s the summer/The clouds go away and the sky clears up/It’s the fresh happiness of a cocktail/The girls are pretty and the gods are in heaven/Here’s the summer/Finally the summer/Always the summer/Still the summer”

Fun, holidays and free time…
Motorway, crowd and sea…
Lunch on the grass, sand-castles and Tour de France…
Storm, suitcase and visa(s)…

Designed as a decidedly special trip, “Itinéraire Bis” is a summer exhibit using MAC/VAL collection works, a series of different “paintings”, like a wall of postcards.

Between the Bal chez Gégène (Robert Doisneau) and the sand-castles (Philippe Cognée), from the banks of the Marne (Jacques Faujour) to the banks of the Loire (Olivier Debré), holidays are synonymous with escape, freedom, meditation, rest, and having fun doing nothing! Watching the Tour de France ride by or take a trip to Cuba (Bernard Rancillac), cutting up the Mona Lisa (Roman Cieslewicz) or meandering around the markets (Jean Helion), lounging around in the sun on the Brooklyn bridge or dance the Paso Dobleu (Gilles Bec), look really closely at the world (Philippe Ramette) or contemplate Venice (Thierry Kuntzel)…

Despite all the good points, there are bad ones too – speed limitations (Peter Klasen) to necessary visas (Barthélémy Toguo), the trip can become a complicated business. Whether the trip is mental (Dominique Petitgand) or illusionary (De Broin), whether it be tragic (Pierre Ardouvin) or whether the search for adventure downright fails (Tixador et Poincheval), there are always numerous alternatives. The unpredictable storms. And never forget, as Françoise Pétrovitch says that “holiday photos of other people don’t interest anyone”.

Frank Lamy
Julien Blanpied
Commissioners of the Exhibit “Itinéraire Bis”

Presentation

With “Itinéraire bis”, MAC/VAL presents an exhibition making us dream of upcoming holidays. With seventy works from the Mac/Val collection fund, this “itinerary” is designed to give visitors an opportunity to take some days off, ride away somewhere new and play truant for a while … This collective exhibit, created by Frank Lamy and Julien Blanpied, is both full of ambiance and poetic, with a string of paintings and a collection of holiday “postcards”. The curators invite visitors to mentally travel throughout the exhibit, calmly strolling along this adventure with interspersed with aesthetically dreamy themes.

Itinéraire bis

The summer period is ideal for adventures, discoveries, meeting people, changes, meditation, rest … the exhibit “Itinéraire bis” lures us along a unique pathway with a both romantic and imaginary collection. Summer itself is full of mystery! Or, as Marguerite Dumas asks: “Qu’est-ce que c’est encore que cette idée, l’été ? Où est-il tandis qu’il tarde? Qu’était-il tandis qu’il était là? De quelle couleur, de quelle chaleur, de quelle illusion, de quel faux-semblant était-il fait? ».

And the artists answer: Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Jacques Faujour use photography like a visual diary, taking us alongside with them on the banks of the Marne. Their photos portray tender and nostalgic feelings. The transparency of time is governed by a long and drawn-out past. The future is thus interpreted according to the past. As it’s so often the case, these artists have seized moments which seem to have been taken at a crucial moment. Of course, the people in their works appear like convergence points which resemble youth, even if the adult feels trapped. What happens to the Philippe Cognée’s sand-castles swept away by the tide? What remains of Erró’s American Dream?

The new and unexpected constraints have limits in our hopes and dreams. Visitors become inhabited by these stories. So Barthélémy Toguo’s trips are prominently loaded “transit direct”, “cancelled”, “nationality” … as for Pierre Ardouvin, he proposes a dark version of Michel Polnareff’s Holidays song with his burnt-up car. Holiday-goers are confronted with the question of choice or more precisely of its unfeasibility. Should we go or should we stay here?

So what is a person supposed to do to escape without necessarily having the means to go too far outside from Paris? Michel de Broin gives a poetic and utopic answer by proposing to have municipal swimming pools built straight into the asphalt at each crossroads in the city of Vitry-sur-Seine. In a different style, Dominique Petitgand created an installation like a high-sounding postcard. Finally, Alain Bernardini breaks all the game rules at the Mac/Val as work-time can in fact also become play time for the personnel. It’s important to note that water is omnipresent in the photographs, films, paintings and installations of the artists. Faced with endless mystery of the sea, the visitor becomes lost in daydreams which transport them to the Venice lagoon (with Thierry Kuntzel) and the sandy beaches of Gilles Aillaud. For many people on holiday, they allow themselves to let the seaside becomes an area where the imaginary drifts according to the tides.

“Itinéraire bis” also offers pictures composed of love stories - not just expressed with words but with brush-strokes by painter Bruno Perramant. Without forgetting the summer events like the Tour de France, revised and re-interpreted by Bernard Rancillac. A trip itinerary holds promises of many memorable experiences, full of surprises and encounters.

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