Alain Bublex's 'Une nuit sans sommeil' at Frac Languedoc-Roussillon

From June 8 to September 28, 2013, the Frac Languedoc-Roussillon in Montpellier presented 'Une nuit sans sommeil', an exhibition by Alain Bublex exploring the interplay between the real and the virtual. The show featured works from his series Plug-In City (2000), including photographs of the Eiffel Tower and the Montpellier train station construction site, onto which the artist grafted colorful container-like habitacles. These images imagine what Paris and Montpellier might look like if architect Peter Cook's Archigram collective had realized its vision of modular, evolving structures. A large silkscreen titled Paysage-Mont Fuji depicts a mundane alleyway with the iconic mountain inserted, illustrating how cultural filters shape our perception of landscape. Four small maquettes reimagine an exhibition at the gallery of Nathalie and Georges-Philippe Vallois, pairing reproductions of works by Albert Marquet with those by Franz Kline, Morris Louis, and Charles Sheeler. The exhibition also included a real green Triumph Bonneville T140 motorcycle, with three painted versions of the bike transformed into a chopper on the gallery walls.