September and October were a success for Gérard Rancinan, who had three exhibitions in Shanghai: The Trilogy of the Moderns, A Small Man in a Big world, at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum, and China 83: Out of Blocks! at the Galerie Beaugeste.
Here’s how Rancinan’s studio presented the The Trilogy of the Moderns:
The Trilogy of the Moderns is a Revolution in three acts. Between comedy and tragedy, it paints a picture of a confused humanity, blindly groping in the darkness, guided by an absolute desire for generalised happiness.
1st Act – Metamorphoses
An engaged perspective on the major changes affecting our contemporary world…
The acceleration of history, the desire for unalterable beauty, the quest for eternity, the endless longing for the Promised Land, the urge for self-destruction, the virtualisation of the world and an absolute need for modernity. All these things behove us to keep a watchful eye on the Metamorphoses affecting humanity. For the first time, Man has reached the limits of his innovations. With Hiroshima, he conjured up the potential for utter annihilation. Since then, he has entered a world which escapes him entirely. Caught up in the cogs of an infernal machine, he has become the slave of his own creations. Gérard Rancinan follows the thread of art history, exploiting links with classical artists and appropriating universal themes to recount his era and its great upheavals. On the Raft of Illusions, the slaves of yesteryear have become jobless migrants, risking their lives for the ambiguous allure of distant shores. In the Big Supper, Leonardo’s ascetic masterpiece becomes an orgy of cheap, brightly coloured food, whose supercilious host prefers more organic fare. Posing a series of ethical questions, Caroline Gaudriault appeals to our conscience. Metamorphoses is a provocation, a call to reflection.
2nd act – Hypotheses
Erasing traces, cultures, languages…
Aren’t we already clones? The same culture, the same jeans, the same fast food, the same iPhones… Hypotheses multiply about a world in search of itself, full of promise, verging on the point of a nervous breakdown. The hysterical recourse to science, the unbridled appeals to the ego, the promotion of worldwide industrialisation, the dictatorship of a univocal emotion, the obsession with cultural democratization… When 25 languages disappear from the face of the world every year, when the civilizations which they once expressed end up as relics in the world’s museums, when all trace of memory is erased, what remains of our heritage? In this oneiric, experimental work, Gérard Rancinan creates bubbles of thought like suspended instants in which free will still exists. In the midst of the global cacophony by which we are surrounded, Caroline Gaudriault proposes an ethnological, linguistic, naturalistic examination… When the transition is complete, our still almost human world will have become a gargantuan museum.
3rd act – Wonderful World
Welcome to the giant funfair that is society…
When men have finally freed themselves from all responsibility and all commitment, when they have unburdened themselves of the idea of courage, they will at last be able to live entirely in their artificial world. A happy, ideal, festive world: a Wonderful World. Like a giant funfair, this strange universe will be home to a host of superheroes, new universal idols living in untrammelled freedom. The rules of the game have been defined: permanent entertainment, necessary infantilization, absolute virtuality, universal happiness… A Wonderful World in which reality no longer exists, in which it is possible to be someone else. But the schizophrenic delirium of its inhabitants – men and women transformed into real life versions of Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck and Pinocchio – invites an ironic gaze. Wonderful World is a contemporary mirror reflecting either a simple sarcastic fable or, if we’re not careful, a troubling reality.
EXHIBITION
Rancinan: The Trilogy of the Moderns
September 19th – November 4th 2014
Shanghai Himalayas Museum
3F, Zone A, No.869,Yinghua Road
Shanghai
China
