homeludovic bernhardt

The starting point of this exhibition which brings together eight artists of different nationalities, is the short story Fragments of a Hologram Rose written in 1977 by William Gibson. We thank its author, particularly known for his novel Neuromancer and creator of the term cyberspace, for permitting us to use the title of his short story for our exhibition, which takes a personal look at this dislocated story where poetic hallucinations contaminate communication networks.

In this short novel, political and narrative disorders consisting of images, kaleidoscopic fragments - all participating in a general disturbance where reality is mixed with simulacrum and words - are superimposed. The exhibition connects contemporary artworks that immerse us in a re-reading of the globalized world of information.

As the curators-artists of this exhibition, at first, our main idea, was to invite international artists who are important for us, asking them to consider the uniqueness of this text. Thus, the Turkish, Japanese, North American and French artists invited are positioning themselves in front of a world of machines where images, words, communication, and stories intertwine permanently, changing our apprehension of reality. They freely interact with the complexity of the text and its many striking narrative fragments very close to the “cut-up” creative process experimented by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs in the sixties.

By exhibiting artworks steered around an autonomous literary experience, we think that art and literature have something crucial to share, beyond the misleading semiotics aspects. We assert that we can enjoy a touch of literature within a 21st century’s art work, whether it uses shapes, images, or words, as raw material. A dialogue - as a hybrid experience - is possible, without any borders restrictions: it seems to us that contemporary literature is a field of reflection for artists, just as contemporary art could endeavour to be “read” by writers and novelists; difficult interchange, sometimes risked, which deserve attempts, bid of junctions, as many artists and movements like Fluxus did. William Gibson belongs to this family of writers inhabited by the contamination of the literature by art and images, and vice versa.

Maurice Blanchot, in his book The Space of Literature, published in 1955, raises the idea of the trans-mutationnal nature of words, linked to their iconic spectrums. He talks about the necessity, which determines the efforts of the writer, “that he belongs to the shadow of events, not their reality, to the image, not the object, to what allows words themselves to become image, appearences - not signs, values, the power of truth.”

Not far from this acception, our exhibition invite to interface two worlds, an artwork being not reducible to its nature of sign neither of object.

To be more engaged in the nature of each artwork, we propose an exhibition made of fragments, of parts released from an inexistent entirety: each image constitutes a partial shadow of an impossible totality, a fragmentary moment of a cataclysmic narrative, a composite fraction of an exhibition that will never be a homogeneous whole. We present pieces connected by a certain contagion induced by their confused and blury nature. Thus, they could be at the same time literary and visual: they explore literary fragments that, side by side, develop a type of narrative to rearticulate, where the words intimately cohabit with their counterpart, images. The exhibition documents an energy conveyed by heterogeneous works that reflect, not only our culture and our society but also critical relations with our present which is decidedly part of a “Gibsonian” space.

Ludovic Bernhardt

April 2019, Paris/Istanbul

Ludovic Bernhardt is a artist and writer. He was born in France and is of Irish descent; he is currently living and working in Paris, after having worked in Istanbul and Lisbon. Just after being graduated from Le Fresnoy contemporary art Studio, he spent several months in India in Indo-Tibetan Himalaya, Spiti valley, where he has discovered Buddhism and Tibetan Art; then he started to create a work which focuses on geo-cultural identities, cartographies, and political signs. Since this period he has produced various installations, objects, paintings, texts and graphics - meditative diagrams, anxiolytics yantras, pills design, military codes, disturbed borders - to explore some psycho-geo-political problematics with the help of political philosophy, marxism and dialectical thought.

In parallel of his artworks, he writes novels, such as Inversion (Gravitons éditions), Work Bitch (JOU éditions) or Topology of a dream. In 2016 he created a self-publication book collection named (Global)*Z, presented in the Multiple Art Days in Paris. In an incisive and "chromed" style, close to the iterations of experimental electronic music, his books build parallel universes and mental maps describing a decay of the globalized capitalism.

He is an artist represented by the Sanatorium gallery in Istanbul, and collaborate with SCAG gallery in Vienna. He has often collaborated with the art initiative space Plateforme in Paris and has participated in several exhibitions and Art Fairs in France, Turkey, Austria, Poland, India, Switzerland, Portugal, China & Greece. He has been curator of the exhibitions Hyphologie and Fragments of a hologram rose showing French, Turkish, Japanese and US contemporary artists, by an internationalist approach. He currently collaborates with the French Spanish artist Luz Blanco.

Ludovic Bernhardt est artiste et écrivain, né en France et est d'origine irlandaise ; il vit et travaille actuellement à Paris, après avoir vécu à Istanbul et à Lisbonne. Après avoir obtenu le diplôme du Studio National d'art contemporain Le Fresnoy, il a passé six mois en Inde dans l'Himalaya indo-tibétain, dans la vallée de Spiti, où il a découvert le bouddhisme et l'art tibétain. Il a ensuite commencé à créer une œuvre axée sur les identités géoculturelles, les cartographies et les signes politiques. Depuis cette période, il a réalisé diverses installations, objets, peintures, textes et graphiques (diagrammes, anxiolytiques, yantras, pilules, codes militaires, frontières perturbées, cartes...) afin d'explorer certaines problématiques psycho-géo-politiques en lien avec des questionnements dialectiques, critiques, marxistes.

Parallèlement à ses œuvres, il écrit des romans, tels que Inversion (éditions Gravitons), Work Bitch (éditions JOU) ou Topologie d'un rêve. En 2016, il a créé une collection de livres, (Global)*Z, présentée lors des Multiple Art Days à Paris. Dans un style incisif et "chromé", proche des itérations de la musique électronique, ses livres construisent un ensemble d’univers parallèles et de cartographies mentales décrivant une fin de règne du capitalisme globalisé.

Il est représenté par la galerie Sanatorium à Istanbul et collabore avec la galerie SCAG à Vienne. Il a collaboré avec l'espace artistique Plateforme à Paris et a participé à plusieurs expositions et salons d'art en France, en Turquie, en Autriche, en Pologne, en Inde, en Suisse, au Portugal, en Chine et en Grèce. Il a été curateur des expositions Hyphologie et Fragments of a hologram rose présentant des artistes contemporains français, turcs, japonais et américains. Il collabore actuellement avec l'artiste franco-espagnole Luz Blanco.

BIO / LUDOVIC BERNHARDT

NEW BOOK: WORK BITCH

October 2019

TRÈS PROCHAINE SORTIE DE MON LIVRE

WORK BITCH

éditions JOU

LAUNCH OF MY BOOK "WORK BITCH", OCTOBER 2019. PUBLISHER: EDITIONS JOU / French language

http://editionsjou.net

WORK BITCH est un ensemble de récits, d’univers parallèles et de cartographies mentales décrivant le capitalisme tardif et son épilogue final : fin de conscience.

WORK BITCH is a set of narratives, parallel worlds and mental maps describing late capitalism and its final epilogue: end of consciousness.