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Temporary Collection,

Frédéric Rolland

TEMPORARY COLLECTION

installation

TEMPORARY COLLECTION

   With "COLLECTION TEMPORAIRE", Frédéric Rolland brings together the works of artists who have won prizes in previous years at the b-GALLERY. Prior to the exhibition, the question was to define the b-GALLERY through the history of the space. Located in the Galerie Bortier, managed and run by the City of Brussels Culture Department, the b-GALLERY is a space dedicated to young contemporary artists. The artists, and the works they exhibit there, are its soul. Based on this observation, Frédéric Rolland proposes, around a series of their works, an exploration of the exhibition process.

How do you present a variety of works?

   Bringing together works by artists whose only link is that they have already exhibited in the same place raises the question of how to hang fairly heterogeneous works of art. With 'Collection Temporaire', the idea is not simply to bring together works and create a subjective display, a kind of retrospective, but to use this 'material' to create a living exhibition that engenders a dialogue with the viewer. Around this dialogue, Frédéric Rolland questions the notion of the exhibition as a process. In the end, he creates an installation that invites us to experience the exhibition at various levels, right up to the conceptual level.

Collection or Exhibition?

    Each artist, having agreed to play the game, finds himself embodied at the b-GALLERY by one of his works. This work refers the viewer to its creator, to his or her artistic work, and to the past exhibition that it represents. If we consider that each artist's selection is the result of an informed choice that honours young contemporary creation, then these choices can be seen as presiding over the emergence of a collection. However, the gallery is not a museum, and none of the works is destined to be purchased by the City of Brussels. It is therefore a virtual collection, and it is to this collection that the exhibition gives substance by bringing together these works for the duration of a temporary exhibition. Each year, a catalogue is published to document the season's exhibitions. It provides a record of the b-GALLERY and underpins the idea of a virtual collection.

What kind of mediation for what kind of choice?

    A range of different media are offered to the public in connection with the works, exhibitions and museums. These include any means of bringing the works into contact with each other. These are the elements that highlight the works and, in some cases, explain them: posters, leaflets, press articles, exhibition catalogues, guided tours, audio-guides, etc., as well as devices for staging the works. The purpose of these mediation tools is to increase the visibility and accessibility of the works, from informing visitors of their existence to explaining how they are exhibited. They act as intermediaries, making contact, dialogue and encounters with the works possible. Without them, the work could go completely unnoticed. They trace a path towards it, allowing us to stop and understand something. Sometimes, they even allow us to come to a standstill.

    So the process of encountering a work is generally as follows: first, the viewer is led by various means of communication to visit an exhibition space, which brings him or her into contact with a certain number of works. Then, in the midst of the works on display, they can focus their attention on one or more of them, using various means of communication or staging.

    With 'Collection Temporaire', Frédéric Rolland works on the second part of the encounter, turning the situation on its head... Visitors are left alone to choose the work with which they will be brought into contact, in advance and via a mediation system (several lists presented by the caretaker). Only the work they have chosen will be revealed to them. It will be displayed for as long as the visitor wishes, in the middle of the installation of all the other veiled works. This preliminary selection disrupts the usual way of entering into a relationship with the work. Traditional processes are reversed, with the viewer first confronted with his or her own process of choice.

    Beyond the questions and the mise en abyme that Collection Temporaire offers, it may also be that a work reveals itself to a viewer, and that together they begin to live...

    Come and experience COLLECTION TEMPORAIRE at the b-GALLERY.

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