Olivier Blanckart's Retrospective at Musée des beaux-arts de Dole

From October 8, 2011 to January 29, 2012, the Musée des beaux-arts de Dole presented a comprehensive exhibition of Olivier Blanckart's work, spanning his career from the 1990s. The show opened with portraits and self-portraits where Blanckart, using obvious artifice like makeup and wigs, transforms his wife into Frida Kahlo and himself into Muammar Gaddafi or Jean-Paul Sartre. He aims not at likeness but at deconstructing iconolatry—the fixation on public images. A section of 'quasi-objets' followed: small sculptures made from tape and kraft paper, materials typically used for packaging. Blanckart sees packaging as the lost part of merchandise and tape as a metaphor for the contamination of contemporary society by commerce. These works, created as pastimes, include functional items like boxing gloves and flip-flops. The exhibition then moved to human-scale sculptures, presented singly or in groups. Blanckart's precarious, baroque figures are simple yet expressive, echoing harsh events and affects without dolorism. He describes his technique as realistic yet grotesque and false. The works embody an 'active pessimism' that prompts reflection on compassion, revolt, emancipation, and difference. Curated by Thimothée Chaillou.