"De rage et de désir, le coeur battant des Hommes"
au Musée Mohammed VI, d’art moderne et contemporain de Rabat - Maroc, les 09 - 10 - 11- 12 - 13 novembre 2021.

Cette exposition magistrale, véritable voyage au coeur d’une humanité en métamorphose, présentera plus de 40 photographies monumentales ainsi que des écrits calligraphiés, des installations, de films …

L’exposition a lieu jusqu’au 08 mars 2022.

A fresh perspective on great movements of humanity

“Metamorphoses” (Part I of The Trilogy of the Moderns) was displayed for the first time at France’s leading contemporary art museum in 2008.
Into the heart of the human condition Inspired by the iconography of the grand masters of the history of painting, the authors explore the issues affecting the entire world at a time when the process of globalisation is accelerating exponentially: ecology; migration; the emancipation of oppressed peoples; fundamental rights and freedoms; “poor food” and hunger; genetics and the fight against ageing; ethnic and economic wars …
The ambition of “Metamorphoses” is not to judge but to suggest areas for reflection, to reopen the debate about the problematic areas inherent in human history, to reflect a journey whose beginnings are lost in the mists of time.

Beyond the skyline

This exhibition has been designed and developed specifically for the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. Rancinan has been confidentially photographing the ocean of his childhood and he has confided his photographs to the gaze of the writer, Caroline, pursuing the same leitmotif – the human quest –, transposing onto the limitless seascape the thoughts about Mankind and its desire to surpass itself. On these landscapes, it is all about abstraction, a persistent reflection manifested in the artistic presentation of the skyline. This is where we find the sense of transgression shared by human beings, who sense its power to limit experience and its potential to unleash the infinity.

Mankind, creator of the great global park of abstractions

In 2014, Gérard Rancinan and Caroline Gaudriault represented France in China under the aegis of the French Ministry of Foreign affairs.
In a 3,000m2 space, they displayed their best known trilogy, The Trilogy of the Moderns.
This project, which has been hosted by major museums the world over is inscribed in the continuity of the history of art in that it represents, from a contemporary perspective, humanity’s great themes and quests: migrations, freedom and oppression. (Part I – Metamorphosis).
It speaks to the current tendency to the museification of the living, to the incapacity to face up to the ineluctable disappearance of languages and cultures, and the voluntary effacement of a collective memory. (Part II – Hypothesis).
The last part of the trilogy shows modern man with his new Hollywood iconographies and comic books, his desires for eternal youth, his frenetic consumerism. A world of absolute, excessive happiness. (Part III – Wonderful World).

From orgies to prayers, from amorous desire to political combats, the world’s histories are decided around a table…

The two artists replied to the invitation extended by Bernard Magrez, who gave them carte blanche to present an original exhibition within the walls of the historic château. Based on minimalist and gigantic Feasts, they deliver a menu containing their vision of a society as touching as it is grotesque via monumental photographs, calligraphic installations, and a dedicated film.
The two authors effect an artistic transposition of the notion of “Feasts” as a social concept. The ancient tradition that serves as a cultural ritual is a social link par excellence, a theatre for the great human comedy.

Democratorship, liberal oligarchy, participative democracy, dictocracy, plutocracy…
What name can we give to a reference model that has nourished so many hopes and which is seeing so many abuses?
Democracy is dead – long live democracy!

If democracy must evolve because it has failed to convince its people, it is to be hoped that politics won’t be satisfied with its death-throes. Searching for itself, democracy has been fighting since antiquity to preserve the individual and collective liberty of mankind, while respecting each and every one.
What a magnificent gift! Yet it has been baffled, corrupted, and violated. Failing to take the human factor into account, its power too attractive to be relinquished, all its weaknesses have been exploited. We demand every right but fail to uphold our duties. We’ve explored every facet of our freedom of expression but we’re left with populism. We’ve made use of all the collective dreams in order to construct ideologies. We’ve sacrificed political courage on the altar of a pernicious consensus. We’ve allowed power to falsify reality and push the line to the border of falsehood. We’ve created a false hedonism to keep people’s minds busy. Democracy has become a grotesque human comedy.
This is the essence of what we refuse to see:
the danger is to feel safe in this precarious and limited space while maintaining its fragile balance. The true mission of democracy is essentially to protect people from themselves. And that of people is to ceaselessly re-think it… for only when they have lost it will they then understand the extent of their loss.

***

Modern Man is both a Messenger of a desire to transmit, and a Punk Demiurge, characterised by a destructive instinct

In the heart of Paris, the medieval cloister known as the Couvent des Cordeliers defined the destiny of the great Revolutionaries. Here, historical figures such as Danton held forth. It is in this historically significant place the “The Destiny of Men” found refuge.
Nothing escapes its nature, however cruel and deviant it might be. Yet, Man owes his historical evolution to his desire to elevate and transcend himself. In this confrontation with himself, half-angel, half-warrior, he seems to be motivated – or saved – by his immaterial side, his thought and his curiosity.
The Destiny of Men is inscribed in the academic tradition of the anthropomorphic representation of angels, from Byzantium to Giotto and Michelangelo. It transposes, in a highly contemporary manner, Humanity’s earliest desires onto a universal and frenzied quest for self-transcendence.

In this temple of the history of art, the world’s first museum of fine arts, the greatest Italian painters made their preparatory sketches.
The authors chose to display their project, “The Destiny of Men” in this special space. From Byzantium to Giotto and, later, Michelangelo, the anthropomorphic representation of the angel transposes humanity’s earliest desires and its frenzied quest for transcendence.

Generalised, obligatory happiness

In the heart of Europe, in the National Museum of Slovakia located on the shores of the Danube like a ship advancing through the water, the Danubiana Museum gave over all of its space to the Trilogy of the Moderns, presenting the project as a Revolution in three acts. Between comedy and tragedy, it paints a picture of a confused humanity, blindly groping in the darkness, guided by an absolute desire for generalised happiness.

Man invents an unreality for himself in order to survive the real.

The two authors replied to the Submarine Base’s invitation by giving meaning to this place of memory, the primary function of which has been changed. They propose a journey through a selection of their works and projects in which the real and the unreal confront one another at every step. The issue at hand is our perception of a society, of a photograph, of the meaning of a word. They address this question from a poetic point of view by calling upon childhood, the past, emotion, and memory, upon everything that fashions the reality of the present. They also address it from an essentially political perspective by evoking the misappropriation of the real, the voluntary transposition of iconography, and the transformation of language and sound.

Beginning with Foucault’s pendulum, the famous Paris museum has displayed a vast range of technological advances. The institution invited the authors to present a single, majestic work: “The Feast of Barbarians”.
The authors speak here of an ideological evolution, focusing on the modern barbarians who, freeing themselves from social codes, ways of life, and the human race, foreshadow the advent of a new civilisation.

A discussion between Caroline Gaudriault and the American political scientist and philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, was what gave rise to “A Small Man in a Big World”, a book that examines the place of Man in his universe, trapped in the invariable geometry of the world. Fundamental questions about what is to become of Humanity, a dialogue between reflection and the minimalism of the image emerged, giving rise to this entirely symbolic project.

In Italy’s leading design museum, the Curators gave the authors carte blanche to evoke the modernity experienced by Humanity, with its new inspirations, desires and excesses, while simultaneously inscribing it in a historical context. The Trilogy of the Moderns speaks to the contemporary human beings that we are.

There is nowhere better than a deconsecrated chapel to display Hypotheses, the second part of The Trilogy of the Moderns. This project evokes the rapid disappearance of civilisations and languages, the effacement of memories, and the loss of diversity to the profit of a unique, global form of knowledge. The authors focus on these effacements to warn us about the museification of the living, which we are allowing to die.

The City of Chartres is renowned for its cathedral full of symbols, which sets Christian culture in the heart of the city. In the Collégial St André, a deconsecrated church, the authors chose to evoke the angel in all of us, not in a religious sense, but with a secular desire for transcendence, moved by our curiosity and our will to go beyond. Christian mythology is tired, and Humanity is seeking to invent new stories and new beliefs necessary to our survival. People need to create an imaginary to confront the real and move beyond it.

It was in Berlin’s street art neighbourhood that Urban Spree, a site known for its underground exhibitions, displayed the two parts of “The Destiny of Men”, the first, more conventional, on the aspirations of human beings, and the second, more confidential and clandestine, on the underside of Humanity, exposed on Polaroid pictures and graffiti in the backrooms of Urban Spree. A provocative exhibition worthy of the host site.
The exhibition provided the opportunity of mapping, for the first time, the photograph “The Game is Over” onto a 40 metre wall.

Located in Shanghai’s French colonial neighbourhood, Sinan Mansion is an ancient building dedicated to exhibitions. The curator displayed “A Small Man in a Big World” on three floors.
With its monumental photographs and calligraphic installations, the exhibition questions the human and how it is positioned, at the dawn of the transhuman and its universal issues.

During the Biennale of venice, the authors have created a Revolution. First, with a performance in the street of Venice, with a wave of « the Raft of illusion » of 20 meters in a country facing the problematic of immigration. After, with an exhibition named « Revolution ».

In each of us there is an uprising individual. This is what makes us human beings. The history of man is built on concepts such as refusal, involvement, action and reaction, invention and excess, rather than submission and conformity.
“Revolution” is an exhibition that shows, trespasses, dares, when the word, which has never had such an open audience, censors itself not to say anything.