Created in September 2018, the collective 1: 61, les jeunes historiens de l’art is supported by 8 students from the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Reunited by a common taste for contemporary photography, members of 1: 61 want to open a reflection based on some works of the current art scene.
The name of the collective – 1: 61, the young art historians – immediately reveals the identity of the project. The members of the association are from a generation steeped in picture at the time of Instagram. Nevertheless, they invite viewers to watch images for more than 1 minute, which is rarely the case with the speed and flow of visual information networks. They do not deny their belonging to these networks, but use them to draw attention to a project that requires taking time with images.
Why this extra minute? Because it helps to stimulate questions and interpretations. The group also takes the opportunity to divert the golden number – 1: 61 – to erect it to Utopian time.
Supported, among others, by the Sorbonne and the House of Student Initiatives, the collective claims to be a group of independent young curators and lauds their membership to the world of university research in art history.
From April 17 to 20, 2019, the collective 1: 61 presents its first exhibition of contemporary photographs at Espace Beaurepaire. On this occasion, five emerging photographers are in the spotlight: Elsa & Johanna, William Martial, Billie Thomassin, Paul Rousteau and Suzanne Mothes.
The major ambition of the event is to show works that are both amazing and intriguing. All the images on display ask the audience the following question: What are you looking at? It is this thread that brings together artists with distinct and singular aesthetics.
To answer this question, the collective selected four major themes in the work of each artist.
The first is the undermining of visual, temporal and spatial referents to images. Do we look at an object or a being? Is it an image of the past or of the present? To this disorder is added a reflection on the misguided nature, that is to say a questioning on the relationship of men to nature, its diversion or its progressive degradation.
The bodies become also food for thought, sometimes endowed with a spectacular animation sometimes close to the inanimate character of the objects.
Some selected photographs finally display a form of saturation, either through the colors or the excess of informations, whose consequence is to disrupt and lose the eye.
The collective has chosen to make all these images interact in the manner of an Atlas to provoke unexpected visual connections.
The idea is to invite a public informed or uninformed to look at images differently. The collective with this exhibition present photographic works questionning reality, color and look.
Qu’est-ce que tu regardes ?
17.04.2019 – 20.04.2019
Espace Beaurepaire
28, Rue Beaurepaire
75010 Paris
