Practicalities (La vie matérielle)

Exhibition at Basis e.v., Frankfurt, from September 19 to October 13, 2013.

"If it's true that every book must have a raison d'être, this isn't a book," Marguerite Duras wrote of La vie matérielle, which she published in 1987. Practicalities (La vie matérielle) considers the utopian reach as well as the material bounds pertaining to art produced in the art school’s realm. How may a showcase of works by art students be formulated? Can it be an exhibition and function as such? Could one articulate its raison d'être anew?

This project results from a one-year exchange program initiated by artist Willem de Rooij in collaboration with curator and art critic Stéphanie Moisdon. Conceived by students and recent graduates of the Fine Arts Master directed by Moisdon at ECAL/ Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, Practicalities is the second part of a twofold exhibition program. It echoes and completes Influence at 1m3, whose display introduced to a Lausanne audience works by artists studying under de Rooij's professorship at Städelschule Frankfurt.

Ways of making and displaying art vary from one territory to another. As Practicalities stands at a threshold between two localities, it acknowledges the constraints and liberties one experiences here and there as an artist not yet fully concerned with commercial strategies or institutional demands.

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities opening Tarrade — Opening night. Left to right: Aymeric Tarrade, Flyby series and Events Occur in Real Time, 2013 Photo courtesy of Basis.

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities opening — Opening night. Photo courtesy of Basis.

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ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Hochuli — Installation view: Andreas Hochuli, Two Double Beds and a Single , 2013.

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Corthay Croci-Torti — Exhibition view, left to right: Grégory Corthay, Big Bang , 2013; Sylvain Croci-Torti, Thumb , 2013.

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ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Klein Husson — Exhibition view, left to right: Emil Michael Klein, Untitled , 2013; Benjamin Husson, Ghosts of past (brown and blue), Correspondence (Text-pretext-context series) , 2013.

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Roh Bannwart Ballmer — Exhibition view, left to right: Kyung Roh Bannwart, Things Incontestable and Granted , 2013; Sophie Ballmer, Une femme célèbre , 2013

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ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Mestelan — Installation view: Cécile Mestelan, Untitled , 2013.

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities Defago — Installation view: Anaïs Defago, Buisson rond 1-3 , 2013

ECAL Fine Arts Master 2013 Basis Practicalities — Exhibition view, left to right: Géraldine Bize, Untitled , 2013; Miguel Meneses, Untitled, 2013; Julien Berberat, Cede Smthg to So. , 2013; David Weishaar, Untitled, 2013.

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