TEMPO: Chapter 1

As part of a partnership established in 2022 with the Clermont-based organization Les Ateliers, In extenso will host the third edition of the TEMPO exhibition within its walls at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025.

TEMPO: An Exhibition in Two Chapters
Why is there something here when there should be nothing? Why is there nothing here when there should be something?

With works by Hélène Caiazzo, Iroise Doublet, Victor Geny, Théo Levillain, Jade Lievre, Leo Reichling, Brice Robert, Frédéric Storup, Kolja Venturi.

Chapter 1: Why is there something here when there should be nothing?
Iroise Doublet, Victor Gény, Théo Levillain, Leo Reichling, Kolja Venturi
November 30 – December 21, 2024

These questions, posed by Mark Fisher in his book The Weird and the Eerie, provide the framework that links together various artistic practices which, at first glance, have nothing in common except for sharing the space of Les Ateliers. The richness of the radically different practices presented in this exhibition reflects the richness of sharing the same workspace. Each day, the artists occupy the same environment, meet in the common areas for a coffee, lunch, a game of pool, or a break, exchanging materials and ideas before returning to their studios to develop distinct and independent artistic universes. Despite the individuality of their practices, each artist’s gestures and rhythms permeate the collective space, creating subtle resonances that weave sensitive connections through their daily routines.

The artists presented in this first chapter – Why is there something here when there should be nothing? – nevertheless seem to share a common thread that transcends their differences. After a year spent within the walls of Les Ateliers, where days were punctuated by silences and the hum of ideas, the works venture into invisible spaces where presence defies expectation, and absence leaves an indelible mark. The works are united through gestures of extraction, repetition, layering, and erasure that trace the echoes of history, routine, and materiality. Thus, the artists reveal moments where the familiar slips into the strange, and the weight of what remains evokes a sense of enigmatic persistence.

Iroise Doublet’s work touches on secrecy and the desire both to articulate something and to erase it. Each day, in a habitual gesture, she covers her notebooks with white paint, rendering them inaccessible and sealing the stories they contain. These acts of covering resonate in a loose sheet, a drawing-collage hung on the wall, where the shapes of her notebooks become silent windows. At the center, the words “no feelings” emerge, fragile and meditative, carrying a reflection on presence and absence. This work, between statement and disappearance, follows in the footsteps of artists and writers such as Laura Lamiel, Lourdes Castro, Annie Ernaux, and Marguerite Duras, where silence, restraint, and erasure become powerful forms of language.

Victor Geny explores systems of power through works that mix popular narratives with social reflections. Titled France Core, his sculptural traps, inspired by the Beast of Gévaudan, evoke both the reality of rural areas and the symbolic failure of the monarchy in the face of an elusive threat. Made from concrete and transportation materials, these works question the modern conditions of the worker, trapped in invisible control mechanisms. Nearby, a column drawn on linen contrasts with its fragility, challenging traditional, rigid, and masculine architecture. These pieces establish a dialogue between past and present, strength and fragility, and permeate the exhibition space with a critique of power structures and a poetics of irresolution.

Kolja Venturi’s works combine a baroque aesthetic with fantastical elements to create a dreamlike atmosphere. A bell, taken from a video game and made of porcelain, becomes a fossilized form stripped of its original function. This object is displayed on spiraling woolen wire stems inspired by arabesques, which Venturi connects to plants used in folklore to ward off nightmares when placed under pillows. These spirals and objects suggest a rupture in the flow of time, where traces of the past haunt the present, embodying the strange in their silent persistence. In his painting, an indeterminate catastrophe is represented, a sort of explosion that results from a deliberate layering to erase traces of color, a color that seems to have liberated itself only in the drop of blue present on the edge of the canvas.

Théo Levillain humorously explores the banality and absurdity of daily life. His kinetic sculptures, made from scrap materials, spin, hum, and exaggerate the banality of everyday objects. From hands turning while holding cigarettes to obsolete electrical outlets, Théo seems to transform the detritus of neoliberal society into a playful yet unsettling commentary on the mechanization of life. Like a blend of the almost-surrealist paintings of Philip Guston and the absurd mechanisms of Mika Rottenberg, his works establish parallels between the body and the machine, the erratic and the static, pulling them into a dizzying dance that reveals the absurdity and strangeness of continuous motion without purpose.

Léo Reichling’s practice draws on symbols of opulence and nostalgia to subvert their associations. Porcelain dolls are transformed into unsettling puppets, silver spoons are melted down, and red stains infiltrate surfaces in an ambiguous gesture that may recall a violent strike or a brushstroke. These works carry a sense of detachment, like the artifacts of a recurring dream or memories distorted by time. They evoke a sense of discomfort, where the boundaries between reality and hallucination blur, leaving only faint traces of their origins.

Together, the works in the exhibition intertwine traces of sound, silence, history, and daily life. The exhibition space becomes a place of strange resonance, where absence and presence merge, and the familiar gives way to the eerie. By exploring the persistence of what remains despite attempts at erasure or transcendence, the artists offer a reflection on the enigmatic and enduring nature of existence itself.

Biographies

Iroise Doublet (born 1993, Rennes) lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. She graduated from ENSBA Paris in 2017. Her approach is shaped by feminist aspects of the history of representation, narration, and self-writing. Between materiality, visual pleasure, and conceptual language, she questions the autonomy of painting within a heterogeneous practice. Her work was recently showcased in a residency at Café des Glaces in Tonnerre (2023), in partnership with FRAC Bourgogne. In February 2025, she will present a solo exhibition at La Tôlerie (Clermont-Ferrand).

Victor Gény (born 1996) received his DNSEP from ESACM in 2023 and lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. “Human beings are such that they learn and resonate mainly through analogy, adopting stereotypes that allow for quick identification, relatively reassuring in relation to the anxiety-provoking nature of otherness. The ritualization of practices, especially religious ones, relies on this dynamic, reinforcing it. Victor Gény’s work, by attacking these stereotypes and popular mythologies, aims to destabilize comfortable thinking and the established certainties of perception. His complex approach employs metaphoric techniques and illusionistic methods found in the toolkit of any visual artist. He articulates several levels of displacement and reversal, operating on form, material, and meaning.” – Excerpt from a text by Jean-Paul Blanchet.

Théo Levillain (born May 2, 1995) lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. Théo Levillain reactivates discarded materials (electronic circuits, synthesizers, fans, transistors, metal tubes), assembling them through fragile connections and sound constructions capable of interacting with their environments.

Léo Reichling (born 1999 in Annemasse) lives and works between Geneva and Clermont-Ferrand. He graduated from ESACM Clermont in 2023 with honors. Adopting a deliberately vague and melancholic approach, Léo develops graphic and sculptural work. His pieces embody a certain ambiguity between nobility and the abject. His work has been shown in group exhibitions at Ps: Communitism, Athens (2022); Fugitive Flavors, Clermont-Ferrand (2024).

Kolja Venturi (born March 22, 1998) received his DNSEP from ESACM in 2023 and lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. His multidisciplinary practice revolves around various personal stories, subjects, and sensations. After appropriating and reworking them, he often creates narratives that deviate from their original context without completely detaching from it. A way of absorbing elements and objects, artificializing things, and confronting the concrete with the ideal in a collection of strangeness.