Exhibition presented as part of the Suite program, initiated by the Cnap in partnership with ADAGP.

40mcube
48, avenue Sergent Maginot
35000 Rennes

As part of the Suite program initiated by the Centre national des arts plastiques in partnership with ADAGP, 40mcube presents the collective exhibition Bertfalhe, which brings together artists Hélène Bertin, Éléonore False and Ingrid Luche.

The works of Hélène Bertin, Éléonore False and Ingrid Luche, brought together in the Bertfalhe exhibition, are linked to a journey, to the discovery of cities and territories, showing an interest in new horizons and a form of otherness. Each of them therefore undertook a trip. Éléonore False went to Japan to meet the Ainu people, Ingrid Luche to Los Angeles in the footsteps of American artists, Hélène Bertin returns to Cucuron, her native village in the south of France. From destinations whose cultures are distant to us, to familiar imageries known through the media that show them as a myth, to countries close to us where some practices may seem perfectly unfamiliar, the exhibition relativizes the notion of elsewhere – always ethno-centric – and of displacement.

In addition to the attraction for various cultures, these artists are more specifically interested in rituals or rites, in the construction of beliefs. Their respective approaches are to verify myths, explore endangered cultures or return to the sources to investigate an ancestral procession that is still going on. Each artist has a working method based on a phase of immersion and documentary research, which then manifest themselves differently in their practice. Publishing or conference can play a role in Hélène Bertin 's work, Éléonore False associates documents with objects, while they become an integral part, more or less identifiable, of Ingrid Luche ’s works.

Finally, these artists are interested in the use of craft techniques – ceramics, textiles, weaving, glass work – that they experiment with, seeking the best formalisation for their ideas. They also all show an interest in motifs, with what they with what they imply as being a part of a culture, a community or a group. A motif that they decontextualize and divert to transpose it onto unexpected media and through unusual techniques.

A photograph prior to a work by artist Richard Prince becomes the motif of a dress or cape by Ingrid Luche. In parallel to this series of sculptures/dresses that are impossible to wear because they are oversized, the artist is interested in another figure, that of the YouTuber Nasim Aghdam, a vegan and animal protection activist. Accusing YouTube of censorship, she went to the company’s headquarters in 2018 with a gun and injured several people before committing suicide.

From her trip to Japan, Éléonore False brings back a book of images of touristic sites and landscapes from all over the world, from which she creates a mural sculpture. Removing the images, she keeps the layout, the printed patterns as well as the paper wefts, which she reproduces, enlarged, on plexiglass panels. Playing on the effects of transparency and superposition, the sculpture can be declined in several variations allowing to be recomposed at each presentation. She also invites the composer Nicolas Mollard to create a sound work inspired by goji no chaimu, sirens that punctuate the day in public spaces in Japan.

Hélène Bertin renews the May Tree tradition in Cucuron by creating sculptures made of the tree that was used in the 2019 procession, to which she associates a unisex costume, designed both to carry the tree and to dance during the procession. Each totem sculpture has a female sandstone face depicting saint Tulle, the saint honoured during this ritual.

Thus the exhibition makes the worlds, objects and motifs of Hélène Bertin, Éléonore False and Ingrid Luche cohabit in a intertwined way, becomes a place in its own right, an autonomous territory composed of elements from different cultures and regions perfectly fused into works that dialogue. Named Bertfalhe, it calls for an imaginary world that everyone is free to locate on a map.

Anne Langlois