de l'amitié

There is, in this exhibition, that which stems from striking reads, encounters and conversations; that which stems from insignificant and random circumstances; that which stems from what happened prior to the gallery; that which gives consistency to our programme: our imagination and everything that arises among us, in between, and that finds its place.

CB: Because it is her·him·them, because it is us. Reason has indeed little to do when it comes to get to grips with the inexplicable force that unites individuals, in a mutual impulse, which goes as far as to erase the seam that has connected them, to quote the very tender words that Montaigne directed to La Boétie. This search for oneself and the other, we feel it all the more actively with regard to all the models of friendship that the gallery has embraced, starting with the one that has developed with you, Isabelle, since 2009. We choose each other, and then we submit to the other — and vice-versa — things that are unmeasurable and indescribable, and that nonetheless keep us very occupied, get us working, and help us create in good company. This exhibition shows various ways of supporting and loving one another and of accepting the many roles that we take on and abandon thanks to others, thanks to those who matter. We rely on this effect of contamination of a friend’s or a lover’s discourse, « driven by its own momentum », to quote Roland Barthes*, supported by each other, and from which would arise a system of relationships that would be much more complex than we initially imagined. You evoked, very early on, in the conversations which initiated this project, the idea of diagonal relationships that the exhibition welcomes and renders more tangible. All the present works are created for and with others. Together we invent a language to materialise an emotion, relayed by the landscape, which accompanies it without reducing it, thanks to its extraordinary mobility (Lola Gonzàlez, Le langage et l’amitié, 2018). We film the street with the constraint of not seeing it directly. And yet life penetrates everywhere, erasing another seam, that of the signature-frame, in favour of a journey guided by the power of chance (Ismaïl Bahri, Foyer, 2016). I don’t know about you, but for me, these two example are already indicative of the pleasure of being together and of producing visible things — even if this pleasure is fragile and alterable.

IA: Lola’s work does indeed bear witness to this collective and sentimental vision of the process of creation, which works well with the atmosphere of this exhibition and the common causes that we adopt through the gallery. This is not only about friendship between humans but also about the affection we feel for the works, these inanimate friends. Over the past couple of years, Jean-Charles de Quillacq has passed on to us his appetence for works that become partners in front of which one cries, colleagues whom one replaces within a principle of equivalence, or objects that one treasures or even sexually desire… His presence in the exhibition enables us to draw a connection with friendship as explained by Foucault in an interview published in Gai Pied in 1981: the philosopher interprets the affective relationships between men, or between women, as « relational virtualities » that are able to trace « diagonal lines (…) in the social fabric », emphasising the possibility of multiple pleasures rather than desires that the sexual revolution is claimed to have liberated. L’Amitié [Frendship] was also the title of one of the first magazines defending the rights of homosexuals in France in the 1920s. The title would have been imposed by Claude Cahun — the hidden editor-in-chief — to replace the original title Inversions. Friendship contains a diagonal model of society — not individuals standing side by side and turned towards consumption — but rhizomatic ties based on the pleasure of being together. A pleasure that is perhaps less « institutionisable » than love.  A place of greater freedom, which would not be driven by profit incentives.

CB: How can one avoid getting altered by language? How can one let rustling freely this high level of abstraction, which unites two individuals who are conscious of getting on together to produce something else than society rites? In the perspective of feeling free to show that which exists without words, I am reminded of a video (The Tree, 2008), in which Virginie Yassef and Julien Prévieux are eating a tree in the heart of the forest. The tree here plays a key role since it gives bodily strength to the relationship between these two people, which does not end with the completion of the gesture. It is my turn to feel free to interpret this as an allegory of friendship, as a potential lesson regarding a methodology to co-create, with the possibility that the weight of things should, however, render language lighter and the alteration fulfilling. Aurélie Férruel and Florentine Guédon are themselves very skilful when it comes to the possibility of restoring a form of lightness when faced with the experience of the burden of things. I recall a performance for which their heads had to be perfectly synchronised, in order to carry as well as to tilt a curved, decorated wooden tray — a kind of stiff, cumbersome headdress that one would not venture carrying alone. For this exhibition, every object or sculpture will bear the mark — either visible or concealed — of a symbiotic and fruitful life, that of a duo of artists, whose work consists in speculating on existence and the foundations of a relationship based on transmission. Ferruel and Guédon could be friends with Valentine Schlegel who used to « dig in the ground or the wall »*, and create simple and useful objects, often in the very location where she would find materials — namely outside, in the weeds or on beaches. Even if the works in the exhibition have a strong presence and address, they emphasise ways of being an artist, which do not meet the desire for pressing or distressed personal radiance. Rather, it is a matter of finding other possible definitions, what one could consider as forms of imaginary filiation that express the affect and the enjoyment of understanding and being understood.

IA: Yes, Pauline and Renate often refer to « friends from the past », who accompany them on a daily basis: they build subjective lineages that allow them to gather freak and feminist communities over time. Their film Opaque (2014) is based on « The Declared Enemy », a text by Jean Genet, whose militant work embodies the kind of political energy that one can draw from friendly and sexual relationships. Donna Gottschalk’s photographs, which document the lives of women living with other women engaged in the lesbian revolution in the United States in the 1970s, highlights the everyday complicity that fuels the shared ideals and strengthens the desire to achieve them for society as a whole.
Whether these friendly relationships take place among couples, in an intergenerational way or spanning throughout the ages, there is a form of respite in finding in someone else the echo of one’s own questionings. The other, the friend, is a mirror of oneself like a model of personal construction: this is what the relationship between Hélène Bertin and Valentine Schlegel suggests — Hélène having put her work at the service of the contemporary reception of her elder art partner for the past several years. The resulting work, La faiblesse des os [The Weakness of Bones] (2019) — a container that welcomes lucky charms made by the ceramist is a structure more than an object, in which we can project our own bonds.
Our exhibition is also the occasion to consider the familiar and friendly feelings that are triggered by the gallery space. By covering the floor of the exhibition space with a piece by Aurélien Froment and Ryan Gander and by offering the walls of our office to Renée Levi to produce a mural painting, we are letting these friendship ties invade us. The piece by Gander and Froment is, to me, very emotionally loaded: it marks the beginning of the journey of two young artists at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (Of Any Actual Person, Living or Dead, 2005) and what marked both of us when we started. Thus, this exhibition also reflects our personal herstories that are inextricably linked to the understanding and the accompanying of the work processes of this generation of artists — our generation.
« We’ve been given a neutral idea of friendship understood as pure affection with no consequences. But all affinity is affinity within a common truth. »

* Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, Fragments, translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York, 2001
Michel Foucault, « friendship as a way of life »https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/michel-foucault-friendship-as-a-way-of-life/
* Valentine Schlegel, Je dors, je travaille, edited by Hélène Bertin, Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier, Éditions du CAC Brétigny, 2017
The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Autonomedia, New York, 2010

Ismaël Bahri was born in 1978, he lives in Paris.
Hélène Bertin was born in 1989, she lives in Paris.
Valentine Schlegel was born in 1925, she lives in Paris.
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz live in Berlin.
Aurélie Ferruel & Florentine Guédon were born in 1988 and 1990, they divide their time between Montournais, Suré and Nantes.
Aurélien Froment was born in 1976, he lives in Edinburgh.
Ryan Gander was born 1976, he lives in London.
Lola Gonzàlez was born in 1988, she lives in Paris.
Donna Gottschalk lives in Victory, Vermont.
Renée Levi was born in 1960, she lives in Basel.
Julien Prévieux was born in 1974, he lives in Paris.
Virginie Yassef was born in 1970, she lives in Paris.
Jean-Charles de Quillacq was born in 1979, he divides his time between Paris, Zurich and Sussac.

Special thanks to: Marcel Schmid, Franck Balland, Jim Bicknell-Knight and Phil Mayer (Ryan Gander studio), Riya Lerner and Branden Wallace (Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York), Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, Galerie Bernard Jordan, gb agency, Antonin Detemple, Josselin Vidalenc, Adrien Lecerf and Bérénice Mainot <3.