Folly!

A female belly with concentric circles painted in red on white, a kissing red or blood red female mouth open on white teeth. A woman dressed in white with her face hidden under a book, sitting on her knees on a yellow ground surrounded by yellow sticks and insects. People wearing costumes made of multicoloured toile de Jouy opening and closing doors, children jumping on beds…

A very metallic sound, a buzzing of insects, a ragtime tune…

These three visual and sound forms, imbued with absurdity, contribute to surrounding a diffuse atmosphere that can inspire anxiety, unease, curiosity and amusement in the face of the mad whirlwind of a world that is going adrift. 

Isabelle de Maison Rouge

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The screen shows a female belly with a navel surrounded by painted concentric circles like a target. The target that the belly button represents will not be hit by any bullet or arrow fired from outside. Quite the reverse: a white mouse soon emerges from the navel, and is then carefully extricate itself from it, followed by spreading out fellow mice. For the spectator, the impression of colonisation, of conquest, prevails : these small mammals find a place to live on the very skin of a female belly. This vision is interrupted at regular intervals by the close-up of an outrageously made-up female mouth which opens gradually until it gapes like a chasm. The extreme opening of this mouth suggests a scream, but no scream comes. The highly metallic soundtrack diffuses a wave of electronic sound that can inspire anguish, stabbing and scratching at the eardrums.

Paul Ardenne 2018

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A woman dressed in white, her face concealed under a paperback book of Kafka’s « Metamorphoses », seated on her knees on a yellow floor surrounded by yellow sticks and insects in a dull humming sound seems to be carrying out a strange ritual. The sentence, became the title of the series from which the work originated, as absurd as hilarious repeated by Alain Delon in the movie « Nouvelle Vague » by Jean-Luc Godard. The association is explosive and yet, full of meaning for whom has already penetrated the universe of the artist… Isabelle Lévénez has always been fascinated by insects, by their societal organizations, miniature metaphors of our human societies, by their apparent fragility and their real resistance, by the sometimes repulsive image that they convey and that she likes to transgress.

Anonymous actions S.A the principle of Anonymous Actions S.A. is always to work with other people nonresulting inevitably from the world of art but coming from different horizons. Here, for example, a dressmaker. Anonymous actions S.A realizes an installation symbolizing the universality of the fabric of Jouy, globalization and the globalisation in force in the economy, as in Article. He associates it in a video with a music by Ragtime wher caracters are envolving with clothing of the five continents made in fabric of Jouy, symbols of globalization.

As soon as you put it in the plural, it’s « douces » that comes as a complement, in the singular, it’s more traumatic and sometimes medical, in architecture, would « Malmaison » be one?

Years ago I was marked by the history of hysteria in the Alps, about women;

All this preamble to tell you that it is not the story I am going to tell you, despite the recurrent connection between art and madness… but how artists take it up and how it has marked me as a woman and curator of this part of the UFO exhibition

As the contemporary artist talks about the world we live in, he raises this question perfectly well, whether it is in a filigree way or in a more visual way where the trained eye surprises and feels it strongly

Here too it is a question of when it happens and in what context

The first work that made an impression on me was Adrian Paci’s « vedo rosso », where a monologue against a red background ends with « and there I was moved, just as the infinitesimal is moved in everyday life

Then I met Jeanne Susplugas again, whose « furby » had been a strong point for « unrest « * by its apparent lightness which masked a deep problem and here, I will present one of her last works which is deeply anchored in the question of alienation in particular of women in society, with this « false » documentary made with puppets

The third work selected, and not the least, is Ali Kazma’s « dancer », not at all thought out with this approach on the part of the artist and which nevertheless shows a form of « madness » through this choreography.

Then, scattered throughout the hotel, works by Frederic Nakache, an artist from Nice, can ask us about the relationship between art and madness.

Thanking OVNI, for having allowed to give free rein, not to a madness but to a reasoned approach of this artistic choice, to confront it with other proposals and to share it with very different audiences who visit these exhibitions during this festival in Nice.

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More informations about imagespassages 

« how to film a dancer?
Icelandic dancer Ema Omarsdôttir
« he pays attention to RECORDING, with a predilection for
close ATTENTION and patient LOOKING. He films ALONE, without staging
nor lighting. He immerses himself in the intimacy of the environment in which he is interested. Filming
He films with precision and detail, producing images that are rich in meaning.

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Based on a text by Daria Defloran – produced by fondation in between art films
Presented at FID and Vision du réel

« A woman tells the story of her abusive and violent past love relationship.
Her voice is mixed with an abstract, blocked image, which acts as a breakdown and contains
the impossibility of representing the state of pain and isolation that her narrative
translates. A poetic and political essay, a radical filmic reflection on a cause
more worrying than ever ».

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Supported by the Villa Seurat Foundation for Contemporary Art and the association ELLE’S IMAGINE’NT.

A group of puppets discusses domestic violence and manipulation.

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