ERNA HECEY OFFICE SUZANNE LAFONT

ERNA HECEY OFFICE
SUZANNE LAFONT
Born in 1949 lives and works in Paris
Suzanne Lafont started practicing art at the end of the 1980’s after studying literature and philosophy.
Her work embodies a singular approach to photography which both escapes the typological reflexes traditionally associated with the medium and questions those
of contemporary art, neither documentary nor artistic (plasticienne), it opens a field of research and generates a language which reaches considerably beyond the
medium. The photographic tool is above all an instrument of interrogation, a starting point from which to reflect, beyond the forms themselves, on the issues of
representation in the present of perception. (Marcella Lista, Situations 2015)
As early as the 1990’s Lafont’s work gained international recognition. She participated in Documenta, IX (1992) and Documenta X (1997), had solo exhibitions
at Moma, Museum of Modern Art New York, USA in 1992 and at Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, 1994, Pinacotheca do Estado, Sao Paulo,
Brazil in (2004), Mudam Musée d’art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2011) Suzanne Lafont took part as well in numerous landmark group exhibitions
such as Photography and the Human Soul, 1850-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2000-2001, Fabrique de l’image, Villa
Médicis, Rome, Italy (2004) Street & Studio, An Urban History of Photography, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom, (2010) Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris,
France 2010-2011, Punctum, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2014).
SUZANNE LAFONT
SITUATIONS
CARRÉ D’ART MUSÉE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN NÎMES, FRANCE
6 FEBRUARY - 26 APRIL 2015
In the sequence of spacious volumes at Norman Foster’s Carré d’Art, the exhibition by Suzanne Lafont brings together a variety of photographic objects. While
the images are usually articulated with textual elements, alternating projections, photographic prints and silkscreen prints on paper define a variety of rigorous
spatial propositions. In what is a rare experience, viewers account as many different apparatuses as works. In this exhibition Lafont subverts profoundly the conventional format of the retrospective by reactivating questions that have concerned her since the late 1980s in a series of new experiments.
By way of introduction, 465 data are organized in the form of a slide show (Index). The exhibition then develops around the figure of the actor/performer. This
protagonist first activates the space around the viewer, then, with Situation Comedy, from General Idea’s Pamphlet Manipulating the Self, it takes over the field
of the book, before giving way to it entirely in The First Two Hundred Fifty Five Pages of Project on the City 2, Guide to Shopping. Finally, it reappears in the
adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Mystery of Marie Roget. The exhibition ends with an announcement concerning coming talks, which, given the absence
of informative content, restores the literality of the museum.
ROOM 1
In the early series le Choeur des Grimaces 1992 et Les Souffleurs 1992 the presence of the body introduces the figure of the performer and the question of theatricality.
SUZANNE LAFONT, Situations, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 2
INDEX 1987 - 2015
Index is a data bank containing 465 photographs taken by Suzanne Lafont between 1987 and the present.
The twofold presentation (double digital slide projection) offers entries both in French and in English, thereby allowing the random association of images. The
starting point may be a word or a phrase; setting up the different order and set of associations in each language. “ I choose the form of dictionary. By placing
images in relation to words playing the role of alphabetically ordered entries, the dictionary allows the sequence to be ordered in a way that is independent of
the closeness of the representative elements. The arbitrariness of the alphabet provides a way of bringing together the world in its diversity”. (Suzanne Lafont ,
January 2015)
SUZANNE LAFONT, Index, 1987/2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Index, 1987/2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 3
TRAUERSPIEL, 1997-2015
This drama is the subject of Walter Benjamin’s 1928 study of The Origins of German Tragic Drama. A new situation is exhibited at the Carré d’Art. Trauerspiel
was originally a piece created for Documenta in Kassel; its subject, Turkish immigration to Germany. Presented in the form of posters stuck on the wall of a
pedestrian underpass, the images brought together allegorized figures and serial views of housing and cities located along the route between Turkey and Germany
(Istanbul, Belgrade, Budapest). Here, the “play” aspect seems to dominate the “grieving” or sadness. In the museum, Trauerspiel sets out its inventory of object
and accessories, both domestic and theatrical. Seen in the closed space of an artificially lit junk room, these figures of workers are moving boxes, dozing off in the
middle of the work they are doing, or seem lost in their thoughts, as in a Beckett novel. This confinement in a basement space is also suggested by mouse masks,
while figures and props from ghostly sets evoke a theatre of shadows filling and fitting into the space.
SUZANNE LAFONT, Trauerspiel, 1997/2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Trauerspiel, 1997/2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Trauerspiel, 1997/2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOMS 4 & 5
SITUATION COMEDY, 2011
Situation Comedy is built around a remake of a participation piece by General Idea, Manipulating the self, A Borderline Case, the end result of which was a small
black-and-white booklet published in 1971 by this trio of Canadian artists. General Idea put out an announcement inviting readers to photograph themselves,
following their instructions: “The hand is a mirror for the mind – wrap your arm over your head, lodging your elbow behind and grabbing your chin with your
hand.” This, it said, would make them “object and subject, viewed and voyeur.” Another offshoot of this project was a poster, Manipulating The Scene, produced
in 1973. The 99 prints in Lafont’s series reprise the 99 captioned images in General Idea’s publication. But her version of the project is not participatory; rather,
twelve students were asked to recreate the 99 initial situations, sharing the roles between them. However, only 23 of the prints show reenactments of the action;
the others feature bright, coloured empty spaces with the words “not performed,” even though the roles were attributed. Emptiness leaves room for free associations between the figures. Also marked on each print is the page number in the original publication to which it corresponds, the name of the student and that of the
original participant whose pose they recreated. The images without a figure also bear the names of the two groups of performers, underscoring the importance of
the role played by names in Lafont’s installation. Presented in bright, colourful sets of the kind used in film or TV studios, the photographs play on the artificiality
of their broad range of colours.
SUZANNE LAFONT, Situation Comedy, 2011, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Situation Comedy, 2011, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Situation Comedy, 2011, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Situation Comedy, 2011, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 6
THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED FIFTY PAGES OF PROJECT ON THE CITY 2
HARVARD DESIGN SCHOOL - GUIDE TO SHOPPING 2001, 2015
The First Two Hundred Fifty pages of Project on the City 2, Harvard Design School – Guide to Shopping 2001, 2015, In Lafont’s appropriation of the Guide to
Shopping made under the direction of architect and theoretician Rem Koolhaas, the space of the book is occupied and literary space is transferred towards the
museum space. Here, as Marcella Lista puts it, photography is used as a “tool for decipherment.” The photographs follow the order of the pages – over 250 of
them from this 800-page study of the organization and transformation of space in consumer society which critiques the disappearance of political space in favour
of commercial space, the management of flux, and the triumph of shopping as a global phenomenon. This is a map of the world we live in.
SUZANNE LAFONT, The First Two Hundred Fifty pages of Project on the City 2, Harvard Design School – Guide to Shopping 2001, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, The First Two Hundred Fifty pages of Project on the City 2, Harvard Design School – Guide to Shopping 2001, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 7
PUNCTUM
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO CHARACTERS OF DAVID LINCH’S TELEVISION SERIES
TWIN PEAKS, 2014
Punctum. A dialog between two characters of David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks. Here Lafont appropriates the imaginary of cinema as seen through the
intermediary of a TV series, Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost in 1990. To do so, she uses a sheet of figures found in a monograph on Lynch.
The layout presenting the 24 portraits of characters plays with the codes of cinema and its rhythm of 24 images per second, and also suggests an enlarged photographic contact sheet. Freed of their narrative connotations, these figures are ready to perform other roles.
SUZANNE LAFONT, Punctum. A dialogue belween two characters of David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks, 2014, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 8
THE NEW MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET, 2015
The short story by Edgar Allan Poe The Mystery of Marie Rogêt was published in 1842 and translated into French by Charles Baudelaire. It was inspired by an actual event, the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York in 1841, when the victim’s body was found in the Hudson. Poe transposed the action to Paris, working
with real press cuttings. Lafont replays these shifts of language between real and fiction in a piece combining images and texts. Shots of New York are juxtaposed
with photographs of people in the streets of contemporary Paris who could be Marie Rogêt or the people who crossed her path. This work identifies displacements
and shifts between reality and fiction, the two languages English and French, and past and present, while reflecting on the question of the genealogy of narratives
and the role of the narrator. The work contains only fragments of the story, allowing for the construction of an open narrative.
SUZANNE LAFONT, The new Mistery of Marie Roget, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, The new Mistery of Marie Roget, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, The new Mystery of Marie Roget, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
ROOM 9
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR A SERIES OF CONFERENCE, 2015
This last room is like a waiting room (a set), referring to work by Marcel Broodthaers. We leave the narrative space for real space and visitors become aware of
their own presence as visitor in the space of the museum – whereas, with Index, the second room placed us emphatically in the space of the work.
SUZANNE LAFONT, Announcement for a series of conference, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Announcement for a series of conference, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
SUZANNE LAFONT, Announcement for a series of conference, 2015, Exhibition view, Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France
Courtesy Erna Hecey Office © Suzanne Lafont
For further information :
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