Lucas Art Talks is pleased to be back in Alsace to cover a genuine, great, local and well curated exhibition titled "Au Bonheur". Presented in the CEAAC, the Centre européeen d’actions artistiques contemporaines, "Au Bonheur" is curated by the director of the institution Alice Motard and Joël Riff, an independent curator working at Moly Sabata.
To create this exhibition, the two curators had decided to look back at the history of the CEAAC before it became a museum...
The history of the house
The 21st century shop
When you enter the first room of the exhibition, you immediately encounter two things, a portrait of a family member of the founder of the Magasin Neunreiter and the Moly Shop. The Moly Shop is the extension of Moly-Sabata, the first artist residence founded in 1927 in Sablons by the couple Albert Gleizes and Juliette Roche.
With nearly thirty artists, the residence created almost a hundred years ago is now (re)producing ceramics after the success of the exhibition "Aux foyers" in the fall of 2020. With their production, the artists will be able to sell their works, and 25% of all profits are reinvested into production grants while the rest will directly go to the artist.
The presentation of this shop in the CEAAC is only made with products from nine artisan potters based in Alsace, and they offer a wide view of contemporary ceramics in Alsace. And it's the first time that Moly-Sabata is showcasing his shop in a cultural institution.
Space and history
The exhibition "Au Bonheur" is an exhibition created by links. Between the personal and professional links between the two curators, who they meet for the first time in London to the link between the CEAAC, it's past, and the artworks produced in this region by contemporary artists. It's also a link between the novel of Émile Zola "Au Bonheur des Dames" and an hommage to William Morris, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement in Victorian England, who advocated a revolution through happiness.
This collective project is reimagining what the building purpose was, an hardware store trading in porcelain, pottery, glassware, crystalware, household items and light fittings made by artists of their time. Those twenty artists and exhibitors are showcasing to the clients (and the visitors) the notion of utility in their objects, even tho some of them have assumed proposal, sexual shapes or historical and familial backgrounds to them.
One of the best encounter in the exhibition as a client was between the photography of Françoise Saur and the furniture of the Swiss artist Walter Guthler. The photography of Françoise Saur is part of the series titled “Accumulations”. When the artist mother died, the artist was given her home and she discovered and rediscovered countless objects which she bought during her life. Some of those objects were seen as memories from childhood but some of them we’re bad memories…
Before the house was emptied, Françoise Saur, decided to create this series of photographs, sharp and in the style of publicity made with everyday object. We don’t really know if those photos where made in the house of her mother or in her studio, but those carefully constructed compositions can only be made with carefully positioned light and object, so we guess it was made in her studio, in a sort of remixed memories to her mother place.
Those memories are linked to the bench of the Swiss artist Walter Gürtler. The Swiss born artist completed is apprenticeship as a stonemason with Alvin Seifried and Jakob Weder in Basel while taking courses at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel (today the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst). After he had received his degree in 1952, he acquired the profaned synagogue in Hégenheim in 1961, which he will turn into his atelier.
His style was initially inspired by the Cubist, but the artist shifted this influence by creating abstract style of representation based on Constantin Brâncuși by the end of the 1960s. During his life, the artist created over 1,000 sculptures and more than 500 drawings and sketches.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: CEAAC
Date: 30.9.2022 – 8.1.2023
Curators: Alice Motard and Joël Riff
Ticket: Free
Informations about the CEAAC
7 Rue de l'Abreuvoir
FR-67 000 Strasbourg
Phone: +33 03 88 25 69 70
Mail: contact@ceaac.org
