In-Visible(s).

Artists: Natacha Anderes, John M. Armleder, Pascal Berthoud, David Brunel, Laurie Dall'ava, Elodie Dornand de Rouville, Seung-Hwan Oh, Nina Roussière, Chu Teh-Chun, Rémi Vinet.

Exhibition by the Curatorial team 2024-25 as part of Ecoart - Curatorial Project, with the participation of the Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain de Genève and the FRAC Sud (Cité de l'Art Contemporain). A project led by Manuel Fadat and Isabelle Muller.

Vernissage, Thursday 26 September at 17:00.

For a number of years now, we have been running an educational programme called Curatorial Project, which aims to give La Grande Boissière students an insight into the world of art on the one hand, and to raise awareness of contemporary art and curatorial skills on the other. The Curatorial team, made up of students supervised by Manuel Fadat, an independent curator and art historian, designs and produces an exhibition from a to z.

We recall the words of Paul Klee, who believed that art does not merely reproduce the visible but reveals it, bringing it to light. But what does it reveal? It uncovers everything that lives within it—the invisible aspects that slip into our memories and senses, making them resonate and become active. Art, in essence, tells a history of the invisible, which underpins the visible. As Victor Hugo aptly put it: form is substance surfacing to the fore. For Merleau-Ponty, the invisible is not the opposite but the very flesh of the visible. These concepts flow freely.

"An image, every image, is the result of movements temporarily sedimented or crystallized within it. These movements run through it, each with its own trajectory (…) starting from afar and continuing beyond it. They compel us to think of it as an energetic or dynamic moment."¹

Art is indeed a realm where the invisible is perceived, among other things. The visible exists only through the invisible—it's a matter of seeing, looking, optics, time, space, events, and even love. As David Brunel suggests, the invisible is the heartbeat upon which the image is founded. The image, in its magical, social, political, and pedagogical dimensions and functions, plays with edges, depths, places, reversals, fields and off-fields, unveilings, hidden contents (conscious and unconscious), crystallizations, heteronomic, autonomous, heterotopic, utopian, dystopian elements, mnemonic and aesthetic triggers... and connects us "within" the visible to the invisible. It links us within the visible to the invisible, to the invisibilized, to invisibilities. Without this nascent invisible, there can be no radiant visible. Therefore, we must think about and feel the invisible within images, allowing it to emerge and weave its way through human experience, always aiming for human emancipation.

The In-Visible(s) exhibition is thus profoundly engaged with exploring the visible(s).

* Caption: David Brunel, Poertrait #1 – Links & blinks (according to Goya), Lambda print on metallic paper, 94,5 x 76 cm, mounted on aluminium, 99,4 x 80,7 cm framed, 2007..

¹Georges Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, 2002, p.39.