“Deep in the Wood” by Pierre Belouin

No and 1973 in Toulon, Pierre Beloüin spent his childhood in Salernes, in Haut-Var.

Pierre Beloüin graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1999. He is a founding member of the Glassbox gallery (1997) and creator of the label and collaborative platform Optical Sound (1997). Hybrid and iconoclastic artist, artistic director and one-man band in his spare time, Pierre Beloüin is also a teacher at the Toulon School of Art and Design.. His work has been shown in numerous institutions in France and abroad. His works are part of public and private collections. (National Center for Visual Arts (Paris), Concrete art space (Mouans-Sartoux), (Patrons of the South…). His latest monograph was recently published by Presses du Réel.

The titles of his exhibitions borrow from a certain history of music. The present exhibition, « Deep In The Wood », refers to a song by the Australian punk-rock band Birthday Party which resonates with all the works on display.

Pierre Beloüin translates – at first sight and as often in his projects – the immediate environment literally. We are talking here about that of the Châteauvert Contemporary Art Center : a sort of French Twin Peaks loaded with strange and telluric forces...

Pierre Beloüin operates in his own way by inviting visible or almost imperceptible friendships. This is the case of the English musical and experimental group Nurse With Wound, who is in charge of the exhibition soundtrack.

The artist further reactivates the work of a local 19th century painter, Charles Vourrial, with the skirmish of a naval battle. The main exhibition space is organized around a central podium – sort of catwalk without a model and vestige of an invisible parade, with a conifer planted at its end, the whole being framed by typographical light boxes and a wine bas-relief made up of bottles.

The sound artist Alice Dourlen will be associated with this system for the duration of the exhibition., the dancer Florie Laroche and the groups Hifiklub and Lune Apache. In the sculpture garden, an installation literally coming out of the ground by the genetically modified artist Ludovic Chemarin© completes the whole.

L’installation Icosajack : V/a (OS.024), star sound sculpture from the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur collection (PACA), presents all the albums released by the Optical Sound label (1997-2020) in the documentary space which overlooks the exhibition room.

The “Deep In The Wood” exhibition is the place of the convergence of waves and forms, brilliant and vibrant fireflies quivering at the bottom of a white cube losing light and incarnation. Far from conventions, the works generate their own space in a flourishing close to the sublime.

Click here to find all the information about exhibitions that can be visited this summer in the cultural establishments of the Provence Verte Agglomeration.