François Curlet + Jens Haaning + Christophe Terlinden IAC – Institut d’art contemporain 26 january - 18 march 2007 The Institut d'Art Contemporain is presenting an important exhibition of work by François Curlet. Over the last fifteen years, Curlet has participated in numerous exhibitions in France and elsewhere, both individual (Micheline Szwajcer gallery, 2004; Air de Paris, 2003; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Sète, 2000; Le Collège, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, 1997) and collective (Palais de Tokyo, Paris; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Grand Palais, Paris, 2006; MUHKA, Antwerp, 2005). The exhibition at the Institut d'Art Contemporain, bringing together fifty-four works created between 1989 and 2006, will give an overview of his approach in the form of a rebus in three dimensions. At this important juncture in his career, encouraged by the IAC, Curlet is inviting two radical artists, Jens Haaning and Christophe Terlinden, to occupy different spaces, thus extending his "off-centre" art into the exhibition venue. François Curlet Born in Paris in 1967, François Curlet lived in Lyon up to the age of twenty-three, during which time he travelled extensively in France and abroad, with Brussels as his base. The itinerary of this self-imposed exile illustrates his stance, not just in conceptual and analytical terms but also on the frontier of explorations into non-sense and the unconscious. As heir both to John Knight and Jef Geys, he brings about a singular fusion between conceptual art, Dadaist survivals, pop imagery and situationist-type speculations. Curlet uses a large variety of methods and materials. He draws both on reality and the imagination, borrowing from the domains of the folk tale, television, economic exchanges and communication – contemporary media worlds out of which he conjures up engaging deregulations. These elements – whether objects, signs, messages, or whatever – are subjected to a variety of displacements and transformations that divert, invert, or even invalidate their own functionalities. In these manipulations, Curlet does not hold back from using different processes that also produce commutations of sense: discontinuity, hypertrophy and repetitions of motifs, deconstructions of the visual, effects of incongruous presence, linguistic games and semantic deviations. He works through a magnifying glass, as though to dilate the ordinary to the point of materialising the improbable. With his talent for distorting cultural codes, Curlet brings out their potential for play, poetry and narration, infusing everything he touches with his caustic humour. He produces visual and cultural telescopings of fictions and realities, and, with fantasy and irreverent laughter, "remixes" objects and images into a parallel, distinctive "UFOesque" world. Publication ENSBA, Paris, the Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne and Le Plateau / FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris are co-publishing an important catalogue on François Curlet's work.It will contain texts by Vincent Pécoil and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. The catalogue will be published at the end of 2007. Exhibitions of François Curlet's work in 2007 : Solo exhibitions: • Architecture fainéante (drawings and models), Centre Culturel Français, Turin, 7 March – 5 April • Micheline Szwajcer gallery, Antwerp, 14 June – 15 July • Le Plateau / FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris, 13 September – 18 November • La Galerie Commune, Ecole Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique – Département Arts Plastiques, Université Lille 3, Tourcoing, November – December Group exhibitions: • A moitié carré à moitie fou, Villa Arson, Nice, 10 February – 27 May • Airs de Paris, MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 25 April – 20 August Jens Haaning Jens Haaning was born in 1965 in Copenhagen, where he lives and works. He is concerned with questions of borders, nationalities and cultural differences, and has been working for some years on projects that involve encounters and exchanges between different communities. It is for this reason that many of his projects involve immigrants, or marginal, clandestine individuals. The violence subtended by his work is commensurate with the relationships of power and violence that are to be found in the social space he aims to depict. While his recent works manifest a certain radicality, in keeping with his commitments and his aversion to norms, they also seem orientated towards a more critical vision that suggests the possibility of hope for a truly relational form of social construction. La Verrière/1 – Christophe Terlinden In situ work: 26 January – 18 March 2007 Christophe Terlinden was born in 1969 in Etterbeek, Belgium. He lives and works in Brussels. His activity centres mainly on public space. In 2000, he launched the LUME project, consisting of words formed by lighted windows in office buildings in Brussels. In 2002 he designed a new European flag and a thousand-euro note featuring the Manneken Pis. Terlinden works in a somewhat ironic mode, generally tailoring his activity to precise contexts in ways that reveal their characteristics, flaws and limits. Between political condemnation and poetic humour… Exhibition: 26 january - 18 march 2007 Opening: 25 january 2007, 6:30 pm