Céleste BoursierMougenot at François Schneider Foundation, Wattwiller, France
Since its opening in 2013, the Art Center of the François Schneider Foundation has consolidated its array of exhibitions. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is now exhibiting in these spaces, at the invitation of director Marie Terrieux. Interview.
L’OFFICIEL ART: Since taking office in 2017, you have sought to consolidate the image of the François Schneider Foundation, at a national and international level, by proposing a program that is at once sophisticated, sometimes playful, and inclusive of many audiences. How do you feel looking back on these two years of collaboration?
MARIE TERRIEUX: I found a great place, with great potential, a beautiful site able to accommodate beautiful projects, and notably large ensembles, with three very open plateaus. I quickly wanted to create coherence in the programming, to find a balance between the more niche works of the annual “Contemporary Talents” contest, and more accessible projects for a diverse audience. We are located in a small village nestled at the bottom of the foothills of the Vosges, it is at least a 30 minute drive to come to us, so it seems obvious to try to bring various audiences together with proposals that are both strong and open. The democratization of art prevents neither quality nor the fact that one may be intellectual demanding. I imagined a beautiful exhibition on the clouds last summer, with different degrees of interpretation: sensory, poetic, political and ecological. Children could identify with the works of Rhona Byrne, Caitlind Brown or Wayne Garrett, while art students or historians could identify references to art history. We have greatly diversified our visitors, with an increase of 6,000 to 10,000 people per year: family audiences, young people, older people... I developed a whole program of mediation and of welcoming for the visitors with, among others, socially conscious projects. In the fall of 2018, for example, we worked for three months with a group of patients from a psychiatric hospital on the theme of clouds and cyanotype. This led to a small exhibition in the art center, with an opening event and decent media coverage. I gave twenty schools the opportunity to present the work of 800 students on the theme of water, and it was a success. We are currently working on a collaboration between one of the artists in our collection and a prison which is close to the Foundation. Inmates will develop a project in 2020, which will then be exhibited within our walls. I’m committed to having these creations exhibited in order to value their work and their collaboration. It’s necessarily beneficial. With the artists of the “Contemporary Talents” contest, I devote myself to highlighting their work through in-depth video interviews, which are accessible on our site during the exhibition, and texts in order to open up their approach and the scope of their creation to our audience. We are working more and more to create bridges with the local community, surrounding institutions, and tourist offices, by lending them works from the Foundation. There is still a lot of work to be done, but our institution is beginning to be wellknown and recognized in the region and beyond. There is a regularity in the attendance of our events, with monthly guided tours, concerts or conferences.
The summer exhibition, “Liquide liquide”—in reference to the New York post-punk group—is devoted to Céleste BoursierMougenot, the artist from the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015. What motivated your choice?
I wanted to present large-scale projects like this one in order to raise the awareness of a large audience and to allow it to discover our site with the help of major artists like Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. I am not in the business of turnover and profit, we are a foundation of public utility operating with a philanthropic approach, and we want to share this wonderful place with a large audience, where the visitor can come to experience a strong project. When I arrived at the Foundation I quickly thought that Clinamen, one of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s flagship works, would find its place perfectly in the building’s great hall... This project was a risky endeavor, because submerging the building involved some significant technical issues: 130 tons of water, including 30 in motion; pools on all floors, an outdoor waterfall, a waterfall that drops onto a 6 meter high bay window, water flowing on all the stairwells and thirty tons of glass outside... Céleste BoursierMougenot spent 6 weeks on site during the assembly process, working with our exceptional construction team. In addition to its great artistic strength, this exhibition stimulated great team spirit and consolidated our commitments.
As part of this carte blanche, how does the artist’s work fit into the Foundation’s various spaces?
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has created almost everything in situ and has fully taken over the art center, including the exterior spaces. The direction of the visit is the opposite of the usual way one visits the site, since one starts with the Foundation’s technical entrances, converted for the occasion into a tunnel plunged into darkness. Past this tunnel with its anxious soundscape, there is a room with three important elements: a black landscape in which one can stay a while, the projection of white forms in a 360 degree continuous movement, and the presence of a waterfall. The whole scene is bathed in an electric sound that can destabilize the visitor, who starts the visit unsettled. In the next room, the visitor discovers a piano that dances and forms the symbol of infinity, close to a cascade of water that runs down the stairs. He or she then goes back toward the light to discover pools, walkways, and a glass beach. Clinamen, the central axis of the visit, sits in the great hall, where its bowls resound with the soft tinkling of ceramics. The work is set against the Foundation’s landscape, which is also transformed for the occasion by the water flowing along the large window, recalling an image from Impressionism. Going up, the visitor discovers that the water has invaded the upper mezzanine and that the source of the project is a waterfall on the roof...
“Liquide liquide”, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Fondation François Schneider, Wattwiller, France, till September 22.