CHEESE MUSEUM, an exhibition by Nicolas BOULARD

Nicolas Boulard, born in 1976 in Reims, studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, from which he graduated in art in 2002. He then joined the Collège Invisible, post-graduation in network from l'école des Beaux-Arts of Marseille. His artistic work has been presented in several solo exhibitions in France (Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Frac Alsace, Frac Aquitaine, art center la Halle des bouchers) and abroad (Moma of San Francisco, Machine Project in Los Angeles, S-air in Japan). He lives in Clamart, en Île de France.

For nearly 20 years old, this artist develops a protean and singular practice. With a perfect knowledge of the regulations of the wine world, it is as an authentic specialist that the artist has transgressed the traditional norms of production by planting a vineyard in a trailer (Clos Mobile 2009), by producing a phantom vintage of the famous Romanée Conti grand cru (DRC 1946, 2007) or harvesting grapes in the supermarkets of Reims to produce a Grand vin de Reims in 2006. By these iconoclast gestures, the intention is to produce new forms. Since 2010, he has been working on a project entitled Specific Cheeses, a study on the similarity of the forms of Minimal Art and cheeses. This artistic research was developed in the form of performances with the brotherhood Specific Cheeses, of lectures (Cheese Theory and Cheese Analyse) and publishing with fanzines Specific Cheeses which compile in 12 numbers an anthology of the representation of cheese in the arts from the Middle Ages to the present day. Whether in these projects on wine, cheese or bread, it is in full awareness of current environmental issues that the artist has cooperated with personalities committed to natural practices and respectful of ecosystems.

Nicolas Boulard creates sculptures and installations by assembling references from Minimal art and conceptual art with organic materials from, for the most part, food productions. His works disturb, with lots of spirit, the aseptic aesthetic of American minimalism by drawing inspiration from the structured forms of cheese, wine or bread. His work is characterized by the appropriation of materials from fermentation to produce an atypical and unique work : fermentation is the passage from one state to another where the action of micro-organisms such as yeast irreversibly modifies the original nature of a material. This transformation process is as much a source of inspiration as a working method. With wood or felt cut-outs, large-format paper prints, plaster or bronze casts, his works give an account of an ongoing process. Inspired by elements taken from his daily environment and from the history of art, his works take on an uncertain appearance, like taken in an intermediate state. The geometric aesthetic disrupted by the use of living materials reminds us that art is a practice of transition.

By using natural materials such as felt or wood, his works allow to isolate strong concepts and make us live a particular experience. His artistic practice places the viewer in an ambiguous situation with the work : it is in front of the ornamental extravagance of a tapestry realized from the image of penicillium diffusing in a slice of roquefort cheese (Penicillium #1 and #2) or the strange arrangement of cavities in the crumb of disproportionately enlarged slices of bread carefully cut from poplar boards (Bread #1 and #2). These assemblages are similar to the grotesques that, in different periods of art history, intrigued by putting forward a taste for hybridization, of metamorphosis and caricature.

For his exhibition entitled Cheese Museum at centre d'art de Châteauvert, Nicolas Boulard wanted to bring together recent works. The museum scenography immerses the visitor in an environment structured by large format works, sculptures and a selection of objects from the collections of the Mucem. In the wake of artists' museums such as that of Marcel Broodthaers or Martin Kippenberger, the Cheese Museum is a temporary institution, a lively exhibition with an organic development in which works of art intersect, shapes and ideas. A space where individuals are built.

Commissioner's Office : Lydie Marchi