Didier Marcel and Loïc Raguénès, Aperçu avant impressions

View of the Didier Marcel and Loïc Raguénès exhibition "Aperçu avant impressions", Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2008. Image: Aurélien Mole

An exhibition curated by the students of the curating programme from La Sorbonne - Paris 4

For this year exhibition project, the Master’s students invited Didier Marcel to show his work in Bétonsalon Art and Research Centre.

The artist proposed, together with Loïc Raguénès, to produce an original set of works conceived as a vibrant response to Bétonsalon unusual gallery space.

Aperçu avant impressions is constructed through a constant dialogue between the artists and the ten curators who will develop at the same time an important number of events (educational visits, discussions, film projections) to facilitate public access and to multiply the approaches to the exhibition (from medieval imaginary to ecology).

Thanks to the hospitality and support offered by Bétonsalon, a young art centre in which reflection on curatorial practices is core to all activities, some interesting developments are to expect.

Well known for his interior landscapes combining romantic industrial ruins and lawns made of real fitted carpets, Didier Marcel continues to explore the territory and pushes his way through forests and fields. Loïc Raguénès enlarges images and paints scrappy pictures of every kind (from Chapi Chapo to Hokusaï) as if he wanted to tell us a story and to confuse us at the same time. A common point between them: they work on secondary aspects, the blanks of images and history.

View of the Didier Marcel and Loïc Raguénès exhibition "Aperçu avant impressions", Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2008. Image: Aurélien Mole

Invited by the young curators of the Master "L’art contemporain et son exposition" (Paris IV) to exhibit their work at Bétonsalon, Didier Marcel and Loïc Raguénès decided to transform the gallery in a one-month utopia. Utopia implies of course a criticism of the existing world and at the same time an affirmation of an alternative model.

In this peculiar exhibition space, the artists will build a modern fairy world – a drawn ground for a vivid landscape, a bunch of trees whose bark is delicately powdered, and some snowy images made of little dots. A color album that will come alive in front of us. It will be constructed as a zen garden, words and ideas will be free to move around and sometime may be to settle.