REGAIN – Collective exhibition with CÔME DI MEGLIO, EVE PIETRUSCHI & JAVIERA TEJERINA-RISSO

The Provence Verte Agglomeration and the Châteauvert contemporary art center are pleased to offer a new exhibition entitled Regain[1] thought from meetings with three of the many artists who have been in residence at the Châteauvert contemporary art center since 2019, How Better, Eve Pietruschi and Javiera Tejerina-Risso. The opening of this exhibition will take place on Friday 2 February from 6 p.m..

Bubble of a time which seems suspended outside a contemporary world which does not seem to stop accelerating, residencies are privileged moments of exchange and work for artists as well, that the art center team or the people met during the residencies.

Regain was imagined both with regard to the changes that our society is experiencing and in response to the work developed by the three invited artists. Car, yes Come di Meglio, Eve Pietruschi and Javiera Tejerina-Risso come from different backgrounds, they have in common that they produce works whose imaginary plasticity takes into account the fact of not being able to escape both the climate crisis and the developments inherent to modernity and technology by sometimes proposing solutions which, as utopian as they may be, could find an application for better living together. All three of them also have in common that they work “with”. In collaboration with researchers, botanists, artisans and craftsmen, authors, residents, etc.. The relationship with others is just as important as the result obtained. This relationship belongs to their work process.

Proposal highlighting transdisciplinarity, Regain will be enriched by the research of ethnobotanist Clarisse Le Bas who, in collaboration with Eve Pietruschi, will develop within the exhibition an olfactory laboratory examining several disciplines. Petrichor – the smell of the earth will head towards an olfactory search for lichen present in the Châteauvert forest, reference to the work Air de Paris by Marcel Duchamp. This project will also give rise to proposals for visits to the surroundings of the art center in partnership with Natura 2000 notably. These actions will make it possible to address both notions of preserving natural spaces and the central question of water..

Transdisciplinarity will also be addressed by the very title of the exhibition. Regain obviously refers to the trilogy of Jean Giono, native writer from Manosque. This is indeed the last part of “The Pan Trilogy”. The text has an important place for the artists but also for the art center team and it will be highlighted during the exhibition.. Thus, an even more important link will be forged with the documentation collection where literary resources will be offered within the exhibition. Whether in the form of books for visitors or in the form of notes or quotes written on the walls and integrated into Eve Pietruschi’s installation.

Beyond what will be shown in the showroom, Regain will therefore consider more global work philosophies and ways of thinking, and will be developed as a modest manifesto of new sensory experiences of forms and ideas created by artists which will allow, maybe, levers for modifying reality through the multiple ramifications addressed by their work.

The exhibition would be supplemented by a certain number of devices imagined by the mediators of the art center with the complicity of different groups of visitors., including those who benefited from projects developed with the artists in the exhibition during their residencies.

Regain is the fourth stage in a series of exhibitions[2] Who, from 2020, promote the “short circuit” and the ambition to show little-known forms of the artistic scene of the Southern region in echo of a more globalized program.

[1] This title is obviously borrowed from Giono's work but it is also the definition of grass which grows back in meadows after mowing.

[2] After the exhibitions Vast surroundings by Mathias Poisson on 2020, Deep in the wood by Pierre Beloüin in 2021 and wild habitats de Léna Durr a 2022