Armelle Caron, games of art and chance

Arriving at the university this autumn, the new artist-in-residence intends to forge a link with the viewer outside the traditional exhibition framework. And invites us to daydream and introspect.
Don't ask Armelle Caron to provide you with an interpretation of her work, to reveal the hidden meaning of her works or to detail the "purpose" of the drawings, engravings or other paintings that populate her universe.
"I don't believe in message art at all, otherwise I would have done advertising or written essays". she warns. In a world accustomed to recognizing the value of a thing by its utility, Armelle Caron's approach is bound to confuse. Since her arrival at the university, the young visual artist has not failed to arouse the curiosity of members of the community.

Art without labels

These encounters inspired the artist to produce his first series of works as part of his residency at the UM: simple questions, soberly painted in watercolor on a white background, which the attentive passer-by will discover posted in various places around the university. Is an artist a researcher? or does art have to meet an expectation? or does the artist give us something to see or to think about? These are questions that, as you'll have gathered, don't require answers, but are valid for their very presence, for their ability to forge a link with the viewer that is as unexpected as it is intimate.
An artist without labels, Armelle Caron is also without borders, having lived in no less than 50 different places and " grown up just about everywhere " in the wake of a globetrotting family. Today, her dashboard is filled with memories of Berlin, Iceland and New Zealand, among others... From this youth on the road, the artist who has now dropped anchor in Sète has retained a taste for change, travel and exploration, on foot, by car and even in her mind, as when she dreams of a walk on the shore of a New Zealand island which, by poetic chance, happens to be the exact antipode of the place where she was living at the time, in the middle of the garrigue...

"Direct contact

Traversed by geography and the relationship with space, Armelle Caron's work here confronts a new environment, the university, "an aggregation of fragmented sites with no real center or continuity" . A "city within a city", experienced by its users above all as a place of passage, but where, nonetheless, a very real collective life is taking shape.
This singular configuration inspired Armelle Caron to use an original method of restitution: to create "direct contact" with the user-spectator, often in a hurry, rarely interested, the young woman decided to randomly insert original engravings made during her residency into the books of the BU Sciences.
"The university is a place where students cross paths and leave once their training is complete, taking with them a knowledge that spreads". Armelle Caron hopes that the same will be true of her works, which are destined to remain for years in silent anticipation of a chance encounter with the reader... or until the verdict of the pestle reduces them to nothing. A sacrifice to which the artist willingly consents in exchange for the tiny chance of one day receiving news of herself from a stranger who has taken one of her creations away...

• See also: "Artists take over universities".