2015
The increasingly depleted biodiversity of the Jura meadows due to intensive pasture farming with cattle and the fertilisation of this lime, low-humus and hence highly sensitive soil is a problem of great personal concern. It prompted me to create a "spontaneous" herbarium with plants that I was able to harvest during the winter months. I specifically wanted to avoid harvesting any living, blossoming and mature plants. On one hand, these plants have already been recorded and catalogued and can be found in numerous scientific herbariums. On the other, it was unnecessary to collect further living samples for the purposes of art. For my needs, the dead plants exhibit a sufficiently recognisable and typical structure, even if a precise determination of identity is made difficult by the lack of characteristic floral elements.
The installation Herbarium jurasiensis is intended as a plea in favour of biodiversity in the flora and the microfauna of the Jura meadows. The installation is complemented by an artist's book listing the names of the plant species collected to date:
Heracleum sphondylium, Carex sp., Cirsium vulgare, Rosa canina, Rubus idaeus, Gentiana lutea, Verbascum thapsus, Urtica sp., Dryopteris, Sphenophyta sp., Rumex acetosa
Cave de la Chaufferie, Couvet (CH)
10 and 11 October 2014
An eight-hour performance in four improvisational sequences with Alexandre Caldara (text), Catherine Dethy (dance) and Laurent Guenat (painting).
« Anges »
Screen-printed linen nightshirts, Rochefort en Valdaine (F) – 2005
« La consommation »
Fabrics, painted plastic, screen-printed nightshirts, stands, vespers of City Church Biel/Bienne (CH) – 2008
« KAUFEN-ACHETER-BUY-COMPRARE »
12 pages, format 46 x 60 cm, mixed media on cardboard, tissue paper, 2008
Synopsis
A civilisation from an undefined epoch inhabits an island in the Aegean. The political system is a dictatorship. Each family must deliver one of its children to the state. Under the close watch of a repressive overseer and his accomplices, these youth are held captive on the neighbouring island of Era, where they must construct a wing with which they can launch themselves into the air from the high, sharply dropping cliff. In the city, these youth are idolised. In the camp on the island of Era, a number of the adolescents decide to rebel and foment a plot to escape death. On the continent, a man feverishly searches for traces of one of the youth who might have survived the leap from the cliff.
It consists of an ambitious project for a total work of art involving literature (ninety pages of text to date), artist's books (six) and painting (sketches).
2011-2015
Au pays des Bourbaki, 150 ans de la retraite de l'armée de l'Est 1871
Texts from Laurène Mansuy-Gibey, Jean-Bernard Passemard, Philippe Hanus, Géraldine Veyrat, Jessica Mondego, Alexandre Caldara
The book is richly illustrated and presents the works (paintings on canvas and paper, artist's books) that will be the subject of the exhibition that will take place next year at the Château de Joux. Due to the epidemic, the exhibition that was scheduled for the summer of 2020 has been postponed to the summer of 2021.
In all good bookshops available.
19,0 x 26,5 cm, 104 pages
Editions Mare et Martin, Paris, 2020
ISBN 978-2-36222-029-6
Exhibition at Château de Joux from June 1 to August 24, 2021
53 works are presented in two large rooms. Visitors will discover paintings on canvas, drawings and paintings on paper, as well as artist books and two lithographs.
Projects 2018
> download PDF (french)
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2016 - 2020
2022
ww.artenchapelles.com
4e biennale d'art contemporain. 25 juin - 21 août 2022
Laurent Guenat, Brey-et-Maison-du-Bois, Église St-Sebastien