Alexis Gautier's work is often created in dialogue with other people. Starting from an interest in cultural transactions, he focuses on exchange, coincidence and the thin line between fact and fiction. Encounters, discoveries or misunderstandings thus form a creative space within which his work emerges in a collective context. The research process is documented in sculptures, video, textiles and performances, all reflecting on the notion of exchange and value, as well as on authorship and the protocols of exhibition-making.
Alexis Gautier (b. 1990, France) lives and works in Brussels and Brittany. He studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt Am Main (Germany) and is currently a researcher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He has shown his work at BOZAR (Brussels, 2017), Blue Mountain School (London, 2018), Basis (Frankfurt Am Main, 2019), ISLAND (Brussels, 2020), The New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles, 2020), MANIFESTA (Marseille, 2020), Goethe-Institut (Dublin, 2021) and at M Leuven in the group exhibition The Constant Glitch (Leuven, 2021). He is supported by the Fondation des Artistes and the Günther-Peill Foundation. In 2022, Gautier will become an artist in residence at WIELS, The Center for Contemporary Art in Brussels.
The concept
The exhibition at M is conceived by the artist as a sequence of multiple chapters and movements. Gautier invites different people, including an museum attendant, an artist, an artisan and a neighbour of M to be simultaneously protagonists and co-authors of the exhibition's script. He makes room for a polyphony where a reality can emerge collectively, through collaborations, identity slippages and collisions.
In this sense, 'L’Heure de la Soupe' is seen by Gautier as a light-sensitive film roll on which different scenes, gestures or interventions can leave a trace. Throughout the space and the duration of the exhibition, a dynamic narrative emerges that enters into dialogue with the practice, customs and mechanisms of the museum. Drawing on his interest in processes and models of collaboration, Gautier brings new artworks in an installation tailored to the space at M.
For this exhibition he collaborated with Shi Chunping, Anita Devi, Indu Devi, Minu Devi, Minu Devi, Reena Devi, Sanju Devi, Vibha Devi, Alexis Gautier, Alexis Gautier, Shi Jian, Abhishek Kumar, Anupam Kumar , Annu Kumari, Pinki Kumari, Saumya Kumari, Shilpee Kumari, Tannu Kumari, Shen Runzhong, Kanchan Singh, Richard Tuttle, Shen Weixing, Fang Yaqi and the museum attendants of M Leuven.
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