For the exhibition, Index transforms into a hybrid space between presentation and production where visitors can observe Curnier Jardin’s previous films and gain insight into her ongoing working process for the production of a forthcoming film. Hence, the exhibition takes as a starting point an artwork that actually doesn’t exist, but through the inclusion of a selection of completed works by the artist and information about her practice, one can previsualize options for what it could possibly become.
The exhibition space conceptually supports the upcoming work’s production, functioning as a changing machine rather than offering a defined result. Some aspects of this future artwork will be developed during the exhibition time through production gatherings where reference materials will be observed and collected for the artist to use. The Index team will be working on-site to gather information and facilitate the production of this new work.
Visiting Pauline Curnier Jardin’s exhibition means the opportunity to witness and contribute to the seed of an artist’s idea while simultaneously experiencing previous pieces from Curnier Jardin’s filmic and artistic oeuvre.
Pauline Curnier Jardin works with films and installation offering unexpected ways to understand narrative. She includes historical references, symbolic content, operatic gestures, musical scores, performativity and several approaches to desire and repulsion which in turn raise questions about feelings, ideas and information. Her layered practice moves from physicality to sensitivity, from image culture to secret languages, from surrealistic chaos to narrative structure. Opera or Classical theatre could be possible symbolic frames for Curnier Jardin’s work as it emotionally and subjectively moves the spectator.
For this exhibition, Index is collaborating with the Amsterdam-based art organization, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and their online space, ificantdance.studio, will host a poetic mirror following the process of the conceptual production at Index.
Index is supported by Kulturrådet, Region Stockholm and Stockholms Stad. Thanks to the French Institute of Sweden for additional support of Pauline Curnier Jardin’s exhibition.
Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is a Berlin and Rome-based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing. She is the winner of the 2019 German Preis der Nationalgalerie, the 2021 Villa Romana Prize in Firenze and recipient of the 2019-2020 Villa Medici fellowship in Rome. Her work was included or commissioned over the last years in Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz; Manifesta 13, Marseille; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Bergen Assembly, Bergen Biennial; International Film Festival, Rotterdam; the 57th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; Performa 15, New York. Curnier Jardin’s solo exhibition, “Fat to Ashes” was recently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin and she has an upcoming solo exhibition at Art Basel in 2021. She will also participate in the group exhibitions at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
