French version of the catalogue Rather Than Nothing!
Raphaële Jeune asked us to design this catalogue, which covers her year of curatorship in 2011 at the Maison Populaire de Montreuil, with three exhibitions: an opportunity to address substantial, shifting, unorthodox content at a far remove from the usual curatorial norms.
Organised with the assistance of philosopher Frédéric Neyrat and some fifty artists, the Rather Than Nothing triptych takes issue with the codes of the collective and the solo exhibition by bringing into play dynamics of transformation and alteration in which time becomes a fundamental value. Dismantlings takes place under the public gaze as a kind of long, effervescent sequence of works appearing and disappearing in a single venue and testifying to the commitment of each artist to a one-day creative process; and Formation(s) brings four artists together around a collective, evolving form, offering an alternative to the generally accepted postulates concerning the artwork’s individual authority, the finiteness of a proposition and the curator’s work of orchestration. For the final segment, Rather Than Everything, Art Orienté objet makes the exhibition space the epicentre for a campaign to preserve a lake in Australia, with a TV studio housing broadcasts, a documentation facility, and the interface for signing an online petition; all this within a context in which objects function both as artworks and parts of the set.
The goal of these three exhibitions, then, was to explore what might enable a redefinition of the “art coefficient”, to make room for works freed of the status criteria constructed by the art world’s media system, and to look into the different ways forms appear, alter and disappear by making light of the spatio-temporal codes of the White Cube. This catalogue assembles narratives, analyses and interviews with the artists in a focus on the works produced, together with a wealth of images conveying the sheer profusion and richness of the outcomes. Remarkable.
Art Book Magazine

Artists:
& nbsp, Guillaume Aubry, Fayçal Baghriche, Pauline Bastard, Neal Beggs, Armand Behar, Keren Benbenisty, Dominique Blais, Roxane Borujerdi, Olivier Capparos, Maïté Ceglia, Collectif 1.0.3, Didier Courbot, Julien Discrit, Carole Douillard, frédéric dumond, Aymeric Ebrard, Julie C. Fortier, Jakob Gautel, Kel Glaister, Marie-Jeanne Hoffner, Charlie Jeffery, Bertrand Lamarche, P.Nicolas Ledoux, LNG, Damien Marchal, Aurélien Mole, Julien Nédélec, Marylène Negro, Ludovic Paquelier, Romain Pellas, Laurent Pernel, Gerald Petit, Régis Perray, Émilie Pitoiset, Marie Reinert, Évariste Richer, Guillaume Robert, Nicolas Simarik, Julien Tiberi, Laurent Tixador, Cyril Verde, Art Orienté objet