Les Archipels imaginaires

Following a long series of extramural interventions, a symposium on exhibition spaces and a few artistic projects, Fri-Art now proposes a thematic exhibition Les archipels imaginaires / Archipelagos of the Mind. It illustrates a dreamlike environment in which the exhibition space becomes a series of archipelagos, islets of civilization to be viewed from hallucinatory perspectives. Interventions by Reto Boiler, Carlos Garaicoa and Markus Schwander invite us to sound out new ways of exploring reality and its space. They aim to shift a real environment to a space internalized by the viewer, projecting him into a vortex, a spatial and temporal excursion. This recreated place invites the viewer to go beyond a mere reading of the works and to attempt a vital, sensorial and reflective experience. Consequently, the idea of entering a space which is neither totally internal nor external becomes a location dedicated to dreams and phantasms. Following in the footsteps of André Breton, the exhibition embodies and reconciles two apparently complementary notions : dream and reality. Here dreams and reality merge and explore a form of “surreality” in which the work (painting/sculpture/video) and architecture intermix and become indistinguishable. Freeing themselves of social, political and moral constraints, the various space-time relationships combine and yet escape the act of viewing in a manner which may be extended and compressed. The artists provide us with a scenario that is both multiple and sociable - perhaps to better surround the unwonted fragments of an urban landscape. Archipelagos of the Mind are in between, in a zone of communication, in an apparent reflection of themselves and the view they have of others, of the past and the future, of the literary and the corporeal. Entering and opening the progressive layers of reality, Archipelagos of the Mind might function as a theatre that forces the viewer to renounce his passive spectator position.