RÊVE GÉNÉRALE comes from a sticker distributed at a protest in the early 2000s, the kind you keep fondly in your teenage bedroom as a relic of your first political commitments. Over time, the slogan, which sounds like a Ska Punk song title, inspires a mixture of derision and sincere hope for an imminent uprising.
‘Toi et ta bande’ (You and your gang) are also found words. They are taken from a legal archive dating back to the Middle Ages when, in the Lausanne region, the authorities brought charges against a certain species of worms for destroying the crops of peasants who were then threatened by famine. Rather than giving bread to the population, a grand trial was organised against these underground enemies. In each region, on a day in August at 1 p.m. sharp, the sentence was pronounced in the fields, requiring the worms and their alleged leader to leave the territory within six days.
It is no coincidence that this story resonates with the present day, and even bears certain similarities to the way contemporary crises are managed by those in power. The historical objects that interest Gina Proenza, whether recent or distant, often remaining on the margins of mainstream history, are endowed with this discreet power of reminiscence. Meaning emerges from nonsense, in the repetition of motifs or gaps in the narrative. As fleeting phenomena, these objects offer the possibility of still believing, during troubled times, in the function of counter-narratives.
The series Every Entrance is an Exit, produced in Treignac, is composed of a set of photographs of loaves of bread that the artist set alight and then threw into the sky. Their ambiguity stems as much from their resemblance to images generated by artificial intelligence as from the versatility of their connotations, evoking both a shooting staror a Molotov cocktail. The artist was inspired by medieval iconography, in which the representation of an auspicious star strangely merges with that of a burning loaf of bread crossing the sky – a motif that could have been introduced by the illuminator to announce a popular uprising.
These images also deliberately recall John Baldessari’s series of photographs presenting his most successful attempts to throw three balls in the air in a straight line (Throwing three balls in the air to get a straight line (Best of thirty-six attempts), 1973). Beyond the humorous tone, it reflects the gap between the concept of a work and its realisation, involving a whole host of factors including luck and the weather. Gina Proenza’s pieces, while evoking the legacy of minimalist and conceptual art, are permeated by contingency and embrace variation, thus undermining any form of certainty about the world and art. The way in which these compositions shift images from one medium to another, incorporating other images and papers found during the process, makes them plastic objects of research. The question is always what to do with images and what to do with predictions.
–Julie Portier
List of works:
Toi et ta bande, 2023–2025
Barley and wheat straw, plexiglass
Every Entrance is an Exit (1474, 1639, 1675, 1789, 1917, 2018, 2026), 2025
crate paper, print on paper, perforated paper, PVC sheets, plexiglass
Gina Proenza, (*1994, Bogotá, Colombia), lives and works in Lausanne. She studied visual arts at ECAL and dramaturgy at the University of Lausanne and La Manufacture. She has held several solo exhibitions at the Musée Cantonal d’Art in Lausanne, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the KunstHalle Sankt-Gallen, the Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, and the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris. In parallel with her artistic practice, she is involved in the emerging art scenes in the region, both as co-programmer of the Forde art space in Geneva (2020-2023) and co-founder of the artist-run space Pazioli artist-run space (Renens, 2015-2017) and, in 2025, co-programmer of Tunnel Tunnel in Lausanne. She teaches sculpture and runs the Écritures workshop at ECAL with Federico Nicolao.
Exhibition from 2 August to 28 September
Treignac Projet
8-10 rue Eugène Daubech
Visits by appointment: +33 (0)7 83 50 15 49 / info@treignacprojet.org
Curator: Julie Portier / La Salle de Bains
La Salle de bains is an association-run art space located at 1 rue Louis Vitet, 69001 Lyon.
It receives support from the Ministry of Culture DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region and the City of Lyon. This exhibition is supported by the Canton of Vaud and the City of Lausanne.
