EXPOSITION “What concerns us” D’Hilario isola

Exposition What concerns us d’Hilario ISOLA

Exhibition of 14 February to 14 Youri Cayron's creative documentary focuses on working-class memory and the history of the Tanneries de Barjols and mixes archive images and images 2026

Le Centre d’art contemporain de Châteauvert de l’Agglomération Provence Verte est heureux de présenter l’exposition personnelle de l’artiste italien Hilario Isola, qui vit et travaille entre Turin et Bagnolo. Intitulée What concerns us, this exhibition brings together for the first time a set of works that, comparisons, compose a unique gallery of portraits within his practice. Certaines pièces sont issues de séries existantes — I Mani, In Philosophy, The Scientists, Aruspice — tandis que d’autres ont été spécialement conçues pour l’exposition, in resonance with the agricultural context, natural and historical of Provence Verte. This dialogue between old and new works reveals an underground line of force in the artist's work : le visage comme seuil, comme interface sensible entre ce que nous voyons et ce qui nous regarde.

What looks at us presents itself to us in chiaroscuro, Hilario Isola composes a new gallery here, not just portraits, but also unassignable figures, of hidden faces, fragmentary appearances : the works are not given immediately, they stand on the edge of the visible, in a regime of shadow and wakefulness, the exhibition is in a way constructed as a theater of the reversibility of the gaze : the works displayed here do not seek recognition, but the attention. They do not appear, they look.

By choosing to title the exhibition after the title of Georges Didi-Huberman’s essay (What we see, what concerns us, 1992), Isola immediately creates tension. It is no longer simply a matter of seeing – but of knowing oneself seen. To abandon the illusion of a sovereign gaze, to enter into a dialectic where the image is no longer an object to be captured, but a subject to meet. As in the Platonic allegory of the cave, the visible is here a matter of projection, of movement, of partial revelation. What we take for enlightened forms may still be a shadow. And what seems to be only a shadow is perhaps what, most deeply, concerns us.

Through this journey, Hilario Isola does not propose an exhibition of portraits, but an experience of the displaced gaze. An experience where the face shape becomes an interface — between memory and forgetting, matter and spirit, gesture and image. What we see, ici, does not give itself straight away. What concerns us, on the other hand, persists. Ici, the apparition moves, widens, diversifies. The look is not only archaeological : it becomes ethical, poetic, policy. It covers the question of landscape, of the ritual, of technology, memory and loss.
Chez Hilario Isola, the face is always what looks at us. And that look — discreet, latent, persistent — forces us to see differently.

His works are never born from a spectacular gesture, but for a long time. It is a work of deposit, slow presence, gentle transformation of materials. They activate an ecology of attention. They welcome the dust, the light, mold, the breath, the void. There is always, in his rooms, a threshold to cross — not just spatial or optical, but sensitive. We must agree to slow down, to move its axis, to abandon oneself to the index rather than the sign. It’s an art of approach, who does not seek to produce images, but to reveal the conditions of appearance.

We could say, with Emanuele Coccia, that these works prolong the living. They do not imitate nature, they are a continuity. The agricultural net, the vine, the branch, le champignon ou la poussière de bauxite ne sont pas des matériaux “inspirants” : they are co-authors. They work with the artist, ils agissent sur la forme, ils regardent aussi. Chaque œuvre est le lieu d’une porosité — entre corps et espace, entre humain et végétal, entre rituel et accident. Ainsi se tisse, à travers cette exposition, une forme de cosmopolitique du regard : un monde où voir signifie être affecté.

Ce qui nous regarde ne nous demande pas d’interpréter. Elle nous invite à éprouver. À nous tenir dans une présence élargie — où les visages ne parlent pas, mais veillent.

À propos de l’artiste

No and 1976 à Turin, Hilario Isola lives and works between Italy and France. Artist and farmer, he has been developing since the beginning of the years 2000 a sensitive and conceptual work nourished by the forms of nature, artisanal gestures and slow transformation phenomena. His work has been presented in numerous institutions in Europe and internationally, notably at the NMNM – New National Museum of Monaco, at MUCEM (Marseille), at Friche Belle de Mai, at Art in General and Artists Space (New York), at the SculptureCenter (NY), at the CCA of Montreal, à la Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), au Museion de Bolzano, à la David Roberts Art Foundation (Londres) ou encore à la Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venise).

Commissioner's Office : Véronique Collard-Bovy

Cette exposition a été rendue possible par le soutien de la Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Ministère de la Culture et Région Sud.

L’œuvre Sole Spento a été produite par AMBULO, pôle artistique et muséal de Digne-les-bains – Centre d’art contemporain d’intérêt national.