Méfiance at Galerie Cortex Athletico Explores Deception and Doubt in Three-Part Exhibition

Galerie Cortex Athletico in Bordeaux presents "Méfiance," a three-part exhibition running in winter, summer, and autumn 2011, curated by Didier Arnaudet. The show examines themes of distrust, deception, and prudence through works that resist clarity and embrace enigmatic formulations. Artists include Stéphanie Cherpin (accumulation), Katharina Fritsch (detournement), Masahide Otani (detournement), Gabriel Kuri (trouble), Mathieu Mercier (trouble), Wael Shawky (trouble), Charles Mason (astuce), and Ariel Schlesinger (astuce). The exhibition argues that dismantling reality often requires an excess of falsehood, pushing artifice to extremes. The trap is presented as an active component of the contemporary chemical combination, with some seeking to make it undetectable through feints and evasions, others performing grotesque contortions to divert attention, and still others emitting contradictory signals. The works do not participate in this trap mechanism but instead pose as enigmatic refutations of neutralizing, deceptive clarity. Their irradiating, offensive force lies in being formidable spurs—often surprising, sometimes aggressive—that serve to disillusion rather than deceive, producing a high degree of exigency and lucidity.