Copies

About

THEOPHILE'S PAPER COMMISSARIAT

copies

It all starts with a book and an exhibition proposal made to a publisher / curator, Théophile Calot, who proposes to build and deconstruct his own work from a set of acts, themselves scattered over several months. A constant back and forth between two exhibition spaces: the space of the book and the space of the gallery, that of Éric Mouchet. At the heart of this exhibition, five artists - Christian Aschman, Felicia Atkinson, Valerian Goalec, Ronan the Creurer and Caroline Reveillaud - who for the most part maintain a close relationship to publishing.

The book at the center of an exhibition

A very similar relationship exists between the work carried out by the publisher (in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word "editor") and that of the curator since both think, organize and put into space a content, itself composed by the productions of different authors and artists.

Théophile Calot, under the aegis of his publishing house Théophile's Papers, thinks his role as publisher as that of a commissioner through a work that questions our relationship to the book and its demonstration to an audience. Also, if he draws furniture specifically adapted to the publications he publishes and presents at exhibitions and events, the editor works from strong curatorial protocols that play each of the spaces that are proposed. And if each of the proposals contains its own story, it is certain that the book serves as a space for research and a common starting point for each of the artists it summons in its projects.

Copies is no exception to the rule. Thought through a series of acts called copies_a, copies_b, copies_c, etc. each of these events is, for Théophile Calot, an opportunity to enlarge his exhibition space and intervention from the piracy of a monographic edition in which he publishes a double page that he himself made (copie_a, in Cyril Zarcone Re / production, Galerie Eric Mouchet editions, 2017), to an intervention in the public space with the collage of photographs taken by Christian Aschmann and published in The Space in Between (Théophile's Papers, 2015), or again by the launch of an edition made by one of the artists that we find in the exhibition, Caroline Reveillaud, in the spring of 2018 (Endpaper, 2018). So,

Exhibition space

A two-way game between the book space and the gallery space, the exhibition presented at Éric Mouchet, then embodies the second stage of this project. Preparatory pieces for a final editing, the multiple acts that precede the time of exposure to the gallery, are like so many moments of work from which each of the five artists are invited to rework. Also, are presented here each of the acts that preceded the exhibition, but a proofreading, see exhaustion of each of these interventions / presentations that took place. Each artist responds to the invitation sent to them by the curator through a specific production ranging from an impression of drawings on aluminum discs to the making of a sculpture, including a layout of editorial projects. .

In the space of the gallery, two structures on which is arranged a selection of works and publications realized by each of the invited artists face each other. A radical device that announces the last of the exhibition, namely, the publication of a monographic edition of 24 black and white pages that will be available at the end of the exhibition.

Copies, May 2018

Alex Chevalier