The studio (making of)

A project by L’Ambassade (Cécilia Becanovic and Maxime Thieffine)

“My ideal studio would be something like Saint Jerôme’s reading room in the painting by Antonello da Messina” Raphaël Zarka

Bétonsalon proposes an experimental project that aims to present a collective work of research, completed by the participation of the public (students, neighbors, researchers in art and in the sciences, art professionals, artists…).

For three weeks, Bétonsalon will not hold an exhibition, but instead will become a research workshop directed by the curatorial duo L’Ambassade (Cécilia Becanovic and Maxime Thieffine). This workshop aims to create a database on representations of the artist’s studio.

This study consists of two stages: the first documents the representations of the artist’s studio and mythology that surrounds it (drawing from books, reproductions, films, etc.), while the second looks toward the reality of current artists’ studios.

Like a blog set up in the space, each participant is invited to leave, or post, his or her commentary or documents. Visitors as well as researchers from the Paris Diderot University – Paris 7, artists, artist assistants, curators and other art professionals can follow the researchers as they work, or can even join the work team under the form of consultations, discussions and round tables, by producing documents and recorded interviews or by conducting studio visits. The workshop will culminate in a presentation of the collected information in a form that is at once pedagogical, poetic and playful. The results of this research will be shown at Bétonsalon prior to taking definitive form for the exhibition “The Form Theory”, organized by Manuel Cirauqui of the Tarn International Artistic Laboratory (LAIT, formerly Cimaise et Portique), in Albi from April to May, 2008.

L’Ambassade is a curatorial duo in contemporary art formed by Cécilia Becanovic and Maxime Thieffine. The collective grew out of a shared zeal for collecting reproductions of works using computers and for the logical necessity of organizing of these materials. On the principal of a dynamic exchange between their two “collections”, they present in the exhibition space or during conferences a tour of art works, art reproductions, non-artistic images, film clips, texts, etc.
This approach – historical, pedagogical and playful – aims to trace the latent genealogies between artists of different eras and different horizons. Tracing the paths between works is daring to appropriate them in order to talk with them from a singular point of view, revealing the stories hidden in works, and propagating the relationships that can occur between them.

Download the presse release