PARIS – NOVI SAD

Galerie Du Centre

Gallery S: The Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina

Duration: 27th April – 27th May 2017.

Coordinator MSUV: Radovan Jokić

International exhibition Paris-Novi Sad / Galerie du Centre: 40 Years of Passion (1976-2016) represents a beginning of collaboration between Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina and a well-known Parisian gallery Gallerie du Centre, founded in 1973. The exhibition will primarily show art scene from France, Great Britain, USA, and Poland, represented by Alain Matarasso, and dealing with narrative figuration and pop art.

Historically speaking, narrative figuration movement originated in Paris in 1964 at the exhibition “Everyday Mythology” (“Mythologies quotidiennes”) organized by Bernard Ransillac and Hérvé Télémaque, in an attempt to offer an alternative to various abstractions which dominated international art scene at the time.

They were joined by Peter Klasen, Jacques Monory, Eduardo Arroyo, Gilles Aillaut, Antonio Recalcati, Valerio Adami, Erro, Henri Cueco, Gerard Fromanger, etc, whose works emerged as a European response to pop art. Alain Matarasso became genuinely interested in the concept only in the late 1970s, especially after an exhibition organized by collectors Philippe and Carlotta Charmet at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.

He explains it in the following terms: “Painter Denis Rivière was my first phase, my stepping stone on the road to narrative figuration. After that, I followed the work of artists who were more or less a part of the movement; from Gerard Guyomard I came to Jean-Paul Chambas, Herman Braun-Vega, Christian Bouillé, Le Boulch’, Bernard Morteyrol, Michel Tyszblat, Tadini, Spadari. Like situationism, which promoted capturing pictures from advertisements and comic books, narrative figuration protagonists are also advocating cheerful, pungent, funny, responsible, and inventive aesthetics. One of the preocupations of this widespread movement, which moves beyond its historical framework, is to reassume critical and political function of painting.

The reason of my interest in pop art and narrative figuration also lies in the fact that I am a second generation immigrant. With these artists, I defend my caste to a certain extent. I advocate art accessible to everyone – art of the people for the people.”

The exhibiton held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad presents important events of Galerie du Centre and leads us through an adventure that has lasted for over 40 years, through vivid and rich French art scene. Since the 1970s and 80s, France and Europe in general have opened up for contemporary art more than ever before. This era saw an increasing number of new museums, art centers, regional funds, galleries, exhibitions, seminars, etc. How to understand, or merely interpret, a creative activity whose forms are numerous and versatile, while our senses are constantly visually harrassed by the media, advertisements, and internet, in the world adrift in the sea of digital images? This is when we come to comprehend the true importance of a gallerist, as it is his role to be a pioneer, to awaken, and lead us into the artistic unknown. Alain Matarasso believes more in careful and acute observation than instinctive selection.

“My specialty is the benefit of the second sight! Exhibitions come and go, but we tend to forget them because time flies and we sideline important artists, remembering only those who were main representatives of a new art movement. My goal is to single out those who were forgotten in the process! I like to rediscover those forgotten artists, and this is where ‘the second sight’ becomes especially important as it helps us emphasize those who should have been considered but have passed by us. That is my passion, there is so much that still needs to be rediscovered.”