Armelle Caron, the interplay of art and chance
Arriving at the university this fall, the new artist-in-residence aims to forge a connection with viewers outside the traditional framework of exhibitions. She invites us to dream and engage in introspection.
Don't ask Armelle Caron to interpret her work, reveal the hidden meaning behind her art, or explain the "message" of the drawings, engravings, and other paintings that populate her universe.
"I don't believe in art as a message at all, otherwise I would have gone into advertising or written essays." she warns. This makes it difficult for viewers to untangle the threads of her work: in a world accustomed to recognizing the value of something by its usefulness, Armelle Caron's approach can be confusing. Since arriving at university, the young artist has certainly sparked curiosity among members of the community.
Art without labels
These encounters inspired the artist to create his first series of works produced during his residency at UM: simple questions, soberly painted in watercolor on a white background, which attentive passersby will discover posted in various locations around the university. Is an artist a researcher? Must art meet expectations? Does the artist show or make us think? Questions that, as we understand, do not call for answers but are valuable for their mere presence, for their ability to forge a bond with the viewer that is as unexpected as it is intimate.
An artist without labels, Armelle Caron also sees herself as without borders, having lived in no fewer than 50 places and "grown up all over the place" in the wake of her globetrotting family. Her dashboard is now filled with memories of Berlin, Iceland, and New Zealand, among others... From her youth on the road, the artist, who has now settled in Sète, has retained a taste for change, travel, and exploration, whether on foot, by car, or even in her mind, as when she finds herself dreaming of walking along the shore of a New Zealand island which, by poetic coincidence, the exact antipode of where she now lives in the heart of the garrigue...
"Direct contact"
Influenced by geography and the relationship to space, Armelle Caron's work is confronted here with a new environment, the university, "an aggregation of scattered sites with no real center or continuity. " A "city within a city," experienced mainly by its users as a place of passage, but where, nevertheless, a very real collective life is taking shape.
This unique configuration inspired Armelle Caron to develop an original method of presentation: in order to create "direct contact" withusers/viewers, who are often in a hurry and rarely interested, the young woman decided to randomly insert original engravings created during her residency into the books of the Sciences University Library.
"The university is a place where students cross paths and then leave once they have completed their studies, taking with them knowledge that spreads." Armelle Caron hopes that the same will be true of her works, which will remain for years in silent anticipation of a chance encounter with a reader... or until the verdict of the pulping machine reduces them to nothing. It is a sacrifice that the artist willingly makes in exchange for the slim chance of one day receiving news of herself from a stranger who has taken one of her creations far away...
- See also:“Artists take over the university”