Bertrand Lamarche's Dual Exhibitions in Tours and Orléans

Bertrand Lamarche, a 2012 Marcel Duchamp Prize nominee, presented two concurrent exhibitions at the Centre de création contemporaine (CCC) in Tours (February 19 – May 27) and the Frac Centre in Orléans (March 2 – April 29). The CCC exhibition was the first to open, but the Orléans show, plunged into darkness with a cinematic aura, reads as its dark anteroom, functioning as a projection space for key chapters of a dramatic scenario. Together, the exhibitions create echoes and back-and-forths, emphasizing passage and transport—physical, mental, or amorous, as seen in Lamarche's fascination with Kate Bush and the city of Nancy. Central to the CCC show was "The Fog Factory," a model of Nancy's train station enveloped in thick fog, first created in 2005 and constantly metamorphosing. It reflects Lamarche's interest in entropy and the alteration of the existing, exemplified by the Haut-du-Lièvre housing complex (1955-63) by Bernard Zerhfuss, whose suspended model floated like a ghost ship. At the Frac Centre, the animated film "Le Terrain ombelliférique" (2005) was shown, while the CCC featured an installation of giant Caucasian hogweeds, whose stinging power creates ambivalence. Lamarche's work probes and renews perception of reality, oscillating between reality and science fiction, utopia and dystopia.