L’homme qui a perdu son squelette at Galerie Derouillon

Artists: Marouane Bakhti, Marianne Berenhaut, Jacqueline de Jong, Julian Farade, Yein Lee, Jean Messagier, Chloé Royer, Pierre Unal Brunet

Exhibition title: L’homme qui a perdu son squelette

Venue: Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France

Date: June 21 – July 29, 2023

Photography: Grégory Copitet / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Galerie Derouillon, Paris

Galerie Derouillon is pleased to present its next group exhibition “The man who lost his skeleton” curated by Marion Coindeau with the participation of :

Marouane Bakhti
Julian Farade
Pierre Unal Brunet
Chloé Royer
Yein Lee
Jean Messagier
Marianne Berenhaut
Jacqueline de Jong

The exhibition brings together historical artists (Marianne Berenhaut, Jacqueline de Jong, Jean Messagier), emerging artists (Julian Farade, Yein Lee, Chloé Royer, Pierre Unal Brunet) as well as the young French author Marouane Bakhti invited for the occasion to write a story, a work in its own right alongside the paintings and sculptures, which replaces the traditional exhibition text.

This show develops Marion Coindeau’s project of bringing together the young contemporary scene with authors of the same generation (initiated in 2022 with Anastasia Bay’s solo), but also of presenting little-known works by historical artists. This is the first exhibition in Paris of the Korean artist Yein Lee and the first presentation in Paris of Jacqueline de Jong’s Harvest (Medium).

“The Man Who Lost His Skeleton” is an exhibition of fragments. It seems to be a refuge for us today who, for many, find ourselves in a prodigious sense of uncertainty about the world we live in. The feeling of destabilization with regard to the things we thought we knew; the feeling of loss of reference points with regard to the relationships that we had stabilized as a civilization.
Rather than giving in to the alarmist and terrible sirens of the end of the/one world, to those of a fallacious degrowth, or to the new heroes who want to “save” “nature”, it seems to me more fulfilling to think with Baptiste Morizot of this lability of the present time as a return to the Dreamtime and to put back at the center of our attention the relations we maintain with the living. The Dreamtime is borrowed from the animist world to define this moment in which the beings of which one does not know any more the statute and towards which we do not have any more stabilized relations pass from the anomaly to the standard. It is the time of the global metamorphosis – of beings and of relations.

The change that takes place in the texture of time sees its waves propagate in the texture of texts, images and objects produced as testimonies.
One of the emblematic forms of this metamorphic time is the fragment. It is often thanks to the fragment that we can assume and accept that we do not know, to testify to a thought in gestation, to an emotion, to a hypothesis that allows us to experiment. Bodies, languages and ideas are broken down, stretched, compiled, eliminated, mixed. The plasticity and openness of the fragmentary form gives it a power of enchantment, the possibility of composing new communities, of weaving new narratives, like scouts launched in reconnaissance before embarking on new paths.

*In 1939, the 2 last issues of the magazine Plastique (directed by Sophie Taeuber-Arp) welcomed a kind of “exquisite corpse”: The man who lost his skeleton, collectively signed by Hans Arp, Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Georges Hugnet, Henri Pastoureau and Gisèle Prassinos. By the multiplication of the hands, which ignore each one the drafting of the other, the text is deprived of spinal column: only the marvellous remains.

L’homme qui a perdu son squelette, 2023, exhibition view, Galerie Derouillon, Paris

Chloé Royer, 130462, 2021, Wood, silicone, sand, color pigment, shoe prototypes, 263 x 8 x 25 cm 103 9/16 x 3 1/8 x 9 13/16 inches

Chloé Royer, Pharaon, 2021, Wood, silicone, chia seeds, color pigment, shoe prototypes, 250 x 10 x 26 cm 98 7/16 x 3 15/16 x 10 1/4 inches

Julian Farade, Mamie (portrait de), 2023, Oil and ink on canvas, 162 x 130 cm, 63 3/4 x 51 1/8 inches

Julian Farade, Sable émouvant, 2023, Charcoal, oil, acrylic and ink on paper, 56 x 90 cm 22 x 35 3/8 inches

Julian Farade, Penses-tu que nous sommes perdus, 2023, Oil and ink on canvas, 200 x 160 cm, 78 3/4 x 63 inches

Julian Farade, Cinq dents, deux cornes, 2023, Oil and ink on canvas, 200 x 160 cm 78 3/4 x 63 inches

Julian Farade, La réponse de l’oiseau, 2023, Oil and ink on canvas, 200 x 160 cm, 78 3/4 x 63 inches

Julian Farade, Papi (portrait de), 2023, Oil and ink on canvas, 162 x 130 cm 63 3/4 x 51 1/8 inches

Marianne Berenhaut, Poupées poubelles, Le Temps, 1971-1980, Mixed media, variable dimensions

Yein Lee, Healing process, Get rid of the foreign matter, 2022, Electrical wire, epoxy putty, fishing lure, motorbike parts, steel, acrylic ink, LED strips, lacquer, 100 x 52 x 184 cm 39 3/8 x 20 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches