A proposal by Laurent Montaron with works of the Institute of Contemporary Art Villeurbanne France Collection. Based on Suzanne Lafont's eponymous film recently acquired by the ICA.
Laurent Montaron, curator of the exhibition, invites us with this project entitled SCIENCE, FICTION - the title is inspired by the eponymous slide show by Suzanne Lafont - presented in the exhibition to a cosmic escape, a journey that questions our relationship to time, to matter, to phenomena. Natural and imperceptible in an environment devoid of any human presence.
The dog is the protagonist in Suzanne Lafont's Science Fiction slideshow, freed by the inaction of sleep dreams of a cosmic odyssey with plants on board to the moon, this natural satellite occupies a place comparable to the earth - to that of the dog and that of humankind. The cosmic escape is reminiscent of the abandonment of an ecologically collapsed planet. Similarly, the plants collected and recorded on board could suggest a museum of doomed plant species.
Suzanne Lafont's forty-minute slideshow Science Fiction produced between 2020 and 2021 draws the thread of the exhibition, within the architecture of Claude Fay. The Church of the Sacred Heart of Fountains, erected in 1957, was deconsecrated at the end of the 90's. The radical modernity of this building in the shape of a prism retains a spiritual dimension even stripped of the religious. It hosts a set of works from the IAC Collection with question, with regard to the future scenarios drawn by global warming, the awareness of our place relative to the surface of the earth's sphere.
The modern and radical architecture of the curios center for art and encounters, housed in a deconsecrated church, built in 1957 and placed in the valley, at the foot of the mountains, also evokes the image of a space ship in early science fiction stories.
The visitor is invited to embark on a journey to discover important works from the IAC Collection with question our relationship to the world, in its simultaneously sensitive, imaginary, scientific or mystical dimension.
Science Fiction was first presented in Lafont's exhibition How Things Think at Erna Hecey Gallery in Luxembourg from April 23 to September 15 2022.
With works from: Dove Allouche, Ismaïl Bahri, Robert Barry, Loïc Blairon, Maurice Blaussyld, Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Rodney Graham, Suzanne Lafont, Lucas Leglise, Laurent Montaron, Evariste Richer, Olve Sande, Ettore Spalletti, Anaëlle Vanel.
