John Armleder's Three-Venue Rennes Exhibition Blurs Genres and Eras

From May 16 to June 30, 2006, three Rennes venues—Galerie Art & Essai at Université Rennes 2, Musée des beaux-arts, and Galerie du cloître at École des beaux-arts—jointly presented John M. Armleder's work. Curated by Valérie Mavridorakis and David Perreau, the project originated at Galerie Art & Essai, where the space was transformed into a disco-like environment with pink draped walls, pleated textile paintings, and colored neon targets. At Musée des beaux-arts, a cabinet featured walls covered in repeated jellyfish and protozoa motifs on pink and blue backgrounds, with selected museum pieces including works by Morellet, Nemours, and Sérusier hung directly on the murals. The cloître hosted a monumental Pour Painting (12 meters of chemical drips) and abstract canvases riffing on Buren's vertical stripes. An annex displayed vintage Furniture sculptures from various Frac collections alongside a new jungle-like installation with taxidermy trophies and monitors playing abstract videos and the 1950s B-movie Gorgo, soundtracked by ghettoblasters playing The Mamas & The Papas. Armleder, labeled Fluxus in the 1970s and neo-geo in the 1980s, continues to subvert codes and confuse genres, his work now influential among younger artists and curators.