Prix Marcel Duchamp Prize 2019

Les nommés

Éric Baudelaire

Rooted in a critical tradition that is derived both from conceptual art and the films of Jean-Luc Godard, the work of Éric Baudelaire (born in 1973) seeks to "create a crisis" in the systems of representation that structure contemporary imaginations. Building largely on his initial  training as a political scientist, Baudelaire endeavours to shift the focus on different social and political facts, thus reviving the use of the alienation effect in today's world. His exhibits use different disciplines to combine the possibility of debate with film, photography and printed texts.

The project he presents in the framework of the Prix Marcel Duchamp prize 2019, Tu peux prendre ton temps [You can take your time] is organised around Un film dramatique [A dramatic film], a feature film that started production four years ago. The subject, actors and authors of the film are twenty students from the Dora Maar school, located astride the municipalities of Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen. Exploring the very nature of the cinematographic medium as it is discovered by the schoolchildren, the film illustrates how they represent themselves, a far cry from any clichés concerning this supposedly "deprived" department. The exhibit Baudelaire builds around the film reveals the gaps in the exhibition area. The whole presentation is extended outside the museum, in Saint-Denis, where Baudelaire installed a flag made by one of the schoolchildren at the top of the Pleyel tower, in reference to the work of Daniel Buren.

Katinka Bock

Located at the intersection of different practices, the work of Katinka Bock (born in 1976) presents a precise and delicate reinterpretation of the history of sculpture in an "expanded field". Extending the post-minimal legacy through different traditional techniques, Bock applies the laws of physics to the creative process and thus highlights the primary qualities of the material. Her "sculptural shapings" are the result of an initial definition of simple parameters, which determine the outcome. She respects the location in which she works, in terms of footprint, measurement and infiltration. The sculpted ensemble that Katinka Bock proposed for the Prix Marcel Duchamp prize 2019 reflects the multiple facets of her work. In Landumland, the in situ dimension appears in a variety of ways: the work is structured around a chequered pattern with copper plates left to oxidise for several months on one of the terraces of the Centre Pompidou and covered with a great band of fabric that then bears its print A radiator that Bock borrowed from a local resident is placed on the chequered pattern and turned on using a closed hydraulic circuit. Landumland is also exposed to the wear and tear of the materials that compose it: thus, two lemons attached to a metal rod modify the bend of the rod as they rot. The anthropomorphic and zoomorphic aspect of the figures sculpted by Bock explores a sort of "living together".

Marguerite Humeau

Marguerite Humeau (born in 1986) places narration at the heart of her practice. Combining fantasy tales and contemporary dystopias, she composes speculative narratives where fact and fiction are interwoven, generating or resuscitating vanished life forms based on a variety of scientific sources, particularly prehistory and biology. The poetic imagination brought to bear by Humeau is based on paying particular attention to innovative materials and the most advanced moulding and printing technologies. Based on sculpted or audio images, the narrative unfolds in multidisciplinary installations. The narrative thread of the project presented for the Prix Marcel Duchamp prize 2019 is based on ethological observations that posit the hypothesis of new religious behaviours adopted by certain animals in response to climatic upheavals and the resulting mass extinctions. Presented in the centre of the space, "dancers" - the respiratory systems of marine creatures - seem to be subjected to the poisoning of the oceans. The lungs swell up and deflate, and end up performing a collective rite in the form of a dance addressed to the Moon. Venerated by the animals from their subaquatic realm, the moon moves in accordance with the gravitational force exerted by the celestial body at this precise point. Living in the walls of the exhibition space, an unknown creature is heard, enveloping the animated group in a mass of sound..

Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille

Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille (born in 1974) revel in a jubilant exploration of the condition of the pictorial medium in the post-historic era. Whether cut-up, superimposed, placed against the walls, hanging from structures or positioned on pedestals, their painting-objects occupy space and impishly deny the primacy of two-dimensional representation in painting. In a Picabian vein, Tursic and Mille also contest the relevance of style. Reinterpreting the myth of the demiurge artist, they engage wholeheartedly in gestural abstraction, without however foregoing figuration. Central to their work, which is based on the appropriation of images produced by "show culture": abolishing all forms of hierarchy between subjects and sources, their recycling processes deal indifferently with pornographic and domestic themes drawn from the internet or from films d'auteur.

The preliminary cut-up of the pictorial base plays a predominant role in the work proposed for the Prix Marcel Duchamp prize 2019. The outline of the wooden base mirrors that of the objects represented - lapdog survivors of a neo-pop past, a larger-than-life young Adonis wearing nothing but a hat, but also exaggeratedly large blobs of paint, fetishistic elements from the painter's mythology and studio. One on top of the other, playing with scale effects, these decor-paintings form a sort of stage whereon the "drama" of contemporary painting is acted out.

By Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov

Curator, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Curator of the exhibition

In Code couleur n°35, september-december 2019, p. 32-35