Le Havre Biennale Blends Contemporary Art, Graphic Art, and Street Art

The Biennale d'art contemporain in Le Havre runs from September 28, 2012 to May 15, 2013, with a specific exhibition at the Musée maritime et portuaire from September 28 to October 26, 2012. The main venue is the warehouse of the maritime museum on the docks. The biennale's theme, 'La Nouvelle Scène de l'égalité,' aims to break down barriers between contemporary art, graphic art, and street art. It pays homage to the libertarian graphic design of the Bazooka collective. Documents from the punk era and more recent works dialogue with Pierre Petit's mural installation from 1989, which features about sixty customized chestnut pans with popular Chinese-made deities collected from rural France, titled 'France Profonde.' This juxtaposition highlights collisions between heavy metal and wood engraving by Damien Deroubaix, and pictorial representations of rock in Élodie Lesourd's art. The collective DFW (Down For Whatever), a borderless club of multi-media graffiti artists, presents a large iconographic mezze. The duo The Bells Angels engage in wild archiving of the site's memory from a photocopier room hidden in a false wall, subverting distinctions between underground and fine arts. However, the street art interventions in public spaces are disappointing, causing the biennale's conceptual thread to lose its way. Critic: Stéphane Malfettes.