Collection Lambert / Young artists program

March 2 – June 10, 2019

In 2019, the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design Marseille-Méditerranée, and the École Supérieure d’Art in Avignon are privileged partners in this artistic adventure, part of the Lambert Collection presentation of its works, as well as the exhibition devoted to Francesco Vezzoli.

Born of Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on contemporaneity, this exhibition explores the relationship between past and present in emergent creation, in as much as they constitute a viable way of depicting what is contemporary or what, at any rate, might be: “This means that the contemporary is not only the one who, perceiving the darkness of the present, grasps a light that can never reach its destiny; he is also the one who, dividing and interpolating time, is capable of transforming it and putting it in relation with other times. He is able to read history in unforeseen ways, to “cite it’’ according to a necessity that does not arise in any way from his will, but from an exigency to which he cannot not respond.“ (Giorgio Agamben, What Is the Contemporary?, 2009)

New ways of thinking the contemporary are revealed through the works chosen, consisting of narratives that evoke notions of vestiges, traces, history and memory in turn. Revenants of an historical or fantasised past, of a time suspended whose material reality eludes us, together they constitute an archaeology of the present through whose prism the outlines of possible collective representation take shape.

The artists

Stéphanie Brossard, Quentin Carrierre, Andrès Donadio, Hugo Fuchs, Micòl Grazioli, Célia Hay, Vanessa Husson, Julien Lamy, Lexane Laplace, Raphaël Mahida-Vial, Delphine Mogarra, Barnabé Moinard, Benoît Payan, Jean Sanchez, Émilie Saubestre, Flore Saunois, Pauline Tralongo, Léia Vandooren, Delphine Wibaux