Between individual installations and collective routes, 10 exhibitions to refresh your ideas this summer

From Geneva to Arles, via Paris, Metz or Saint-Étienne, an overview of the exhibitions to see in the summer.

Arthur Jafa

On the sidelines of the Arles Photographic Meetings, the Luma Foundation puts its program of exhibitions in tune with the reproduced image. This gives the most extensive exhibition dedicated to artist and videographer Arthur Jafa to date.

The one who first made his mark in the 1990s, in Hollywood cinema, and produced clips for Kanye West, Jay-Z or Solange, established himself at the turn of the 2010s as one of the finest analysts of African-American culture.

From the inside, he will intensify the ontological experience and the emotional charge, coming to exhibit the white gauze as conveyed by images, music and new media. With the videos Apex (2013) and The White Album (2018), Jafa has already produced some of the era’s key works. At Luma, he presents a set of photographs and sculptures, as well as two new films, including the enigmatic AGHDRA, postapocalyptic elegy emptied of human representations.

LiveEvil, until October 31, Luma, Arles.

Wilfrid Almendra

These are building materials, stubborn weeds, a tank top that’s seen better days, a handful of puns: Wilfrid Almendraa Franco-Portuguese artist based in Marseille, lets the ordinary poetry of the world of work and the precarious sculpture of an anthropology of the allotment garden emerge.

Adelaide, until October 30, Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Wasteland Belle de Mai, Marseille IIIe.

Wilfrid Almendra, “VLZ310, later” (details), 2019.

Exporama

Every year is held in Rennes on Exporama contemporary art trail. The theme is placed for this edition under the auspices of the party, declining the dimensions of transgressive resistance and pleasurable claim of popular gatherings. With works by artists of all generations, from Nan Goldin to Tony Regazzoni, from John Giorno to Zuzanna Czebatul.

No sleep – The party in all its forms, until September 18, The Free Fields, Museum of Fine Arts and Frac BrittanyRennes.

chris korda

The only way to stop global warming? Let the human disappear. The demonstration, as led by Chris Korda, is relentless. Under the name of The Church of Euthanasia, the total artist, techno musician, libertarian coder and transgender activist has been carrying out a vast infiltration operation since 1991: from the streets to national television, in through the sale of T-shirts, pins and other car stickers.

Suicide, abortion, sodomy and cannibalism, the four pillars of the Church, then come to twist from the inside the mediatico-sexual matrix of America. The gesture is the most visible while being only the submerged part of a proliferating and urgent work. At the Modern Comfort, the project space and publishing house Goswell Roadcarried by the duo of artists and curators Coralie Ruiz and Anthony Stephinson, does it justice, plunging into the archives to better shed light on recent projects as well.

The (Wo)man of the Future – Chris Korda, a retrospective, until August 28, Modern Comfort, Poitiers.

© Chris Korda

Lina Lapelyte

Nothing, or so little, predestined Lina Lapelyte to become an artist. The Lithuanian will first have studied the classical violin, before pursuing studies in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. There, it is still music, improvised, choral or electronic, which constitutes his raw material. But in his approach, the artist has the concerns of his generation: to rethink otherness and vulnerability, in the light of the climate crisis and the decentering of the human.

So, to embody and give substance to these lines of flight, she links music and sculpture through opera-performance: in 2019 at the Venice Art Biennale, she pocketed the Golden Lion with Sun & Sea (Marina). There too: culture of leisure, ecological responsibility, discordant farces. In Paris, the main intervention, active throughout the exhibition, will invite amateur performers who therefore sing out of tune, or at least not in tune, leading them in this to shed the normative perceptual frameworks.

The Mutes, until July 24, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris IVe.

Jean Painleve

In recent years, we have seen Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) poke his nose here and there at contemporary art exhibitions. Revered for his dreamlike scientific documentaries devoted to the marine world, he also frequented the surrealists during his lifetime. Today, we are rediscovering it as an anti-speciesist before its time.

The feet in water, until September 18, Jeu de Paume, Paris Ier.

Guerreiro do Divino Amor

Guerreiro do Divino Amor delves into digital archeology to extract the stories buried at the heart of a territory’s identities – here, through an installation of videos, backlit panels and sculptures as a science-fictional temple.

Superfictional Sanctuaries, until August 7, Contemporary Art Center, Geneva.

The future behind us

From the 1990s to today, a generation of Italian artists (Carla Lonzi, Claire Fontaine, Rossella Biscotti, etc.) emerges who take stock of their heritage: the emancipatory wave of the 1970s is no more, the drying up reactionary neoliberal 1980s weighing. So these artists tinker with their own filiations: the reconquest of a horizon is at this price.

The Future behind us – Italian art since the 1990s: the contemporary versus the past, until August 28, Villa Arson, Nice.

Francesco Jodice, “La notte del drive in: Milano spara”, 2013. © Francesco Jodice

Eva Aeppli

It is a story of the avant-gardes of the 1970s which is being written, another at least, when the too little known work of Eva Aeppli is summoned. Born in 1925, the Swiss sculptor was close to Jean Tinguely or Niki de Saint Phalle, while remaining on the sidelines of the movements of the time. His expressive work is sometimes grotesque, sometimes spiritual, always resolutely current.

The Sentimental Museum of Eva Aeppli, until November 14, Center Pompidou-Metz.

Globalisto

The philosophy stated in the title is that invented by the artists of an exhibition entrusted to Mo Laudi, artist, researcher and composer: it is anchored in the remix, the speculative theory, the invention of alternatives, and does so by a pan-African prism. Following the diasporic identities she celebrates, she chooses a decompartmentalization of mediums and eras: from video to textiles, from performance to painting, and via artists like Sammy Baloji, Arthur Jafa, Myriam Mihindou, Wilfried Nakeu or Josepha Ntjam.

Globalisto – A philosophy in motion, until October 16, MAMC+, Saint-Etienne.

Wilfried Nakeu, view of “Spiritual Reconnection of African Politics” (2022). © Wilfried Nakeu

Between individual installations and collective routes, 10 exhibitions to refresh your ideas this summer – Les Inrocks