From November 14 to December 4, 2014, Elac Gallery presents Vertige des correspondances (Vertiginous parallels), an exhibition by ECAL's Fine Arts Master students, while ECAL launches an eponymous publication. The show and the book are the twofold outcome of a research project directed by Julien Fronsacq with the support of HES-SO/University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland.
The works of Charles Blanc-Gatti (1890-1966) are largely unknown. In his search for synesthetic harmony, this musicalist painter also played with a loss of spatial markers. These two sides of Blanc-Gatti's art are explored in this project, through the relationship the artist entertained with the alpine space.
The show presents a novel selection of artworks and documents by Charles Blanc-Gatti, together with works by student-researchers Jérôme Baccaglio, Anaïs Defago, Arthur Fouray, Julien Gremaud, Marine Julié, Emanuele Marcuccio, Rubén Valdez and Linda Voorwinde.
Vertiginous Parallels is also a bilingual (FR/EN) publication comprising 188 pages with 85 reproductions from Blanc-Gatti's archives. Published by ECAL and distributed by Presses du réel, the book is edited by Julien Fronsacq in collaboration with Lucile Dupraz, with graphic design by Marietta Eugster and Teo Schifferli, and photographs by Jonas Marguet. Experts from various fields have contributed essays, including the music specialist Maxime Guitton, the art historian and curator Gallien Déjean, the cinema historian Teresa Castro, the artist and historian of medicine Jelena Martinovic, and the art historian and modern danse specialist Sarah Burkhalter.
Documents and works by Charles Blanc-Gatti courtesy the Swiss Film Archive, the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA) and the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne.
