Kelly Weiss

À votre contact,
se confondre
[At your contact,
blending in]
Exposition

“To start with, then, there isn’t very much:
nothingness, the impalpable, the virtually
immaterial; extension, the external, what is
external to us, what we move about in the midst
of, our ambient milieu, the space around us.
Space. Not so much those infinite spaces […]
but spaces that are much closer to hand,
in principle anyway: towns, for example, or
the countryside, or the corridors of the Metro,
or a public park.”
1

AH! OH! by Ricardo Basbaum and À votre contact, se confondre [At your contact, blending in] by Kelly Weiss are two exhibitions that share a certain ‘poetics of space2’. Both explore plastic, conceptual and relational variations, resulting from a negotiation undertaken with the context of the art centre and its architecture. Based on a close observation of the ins and outs of the historic building, and of the movement and communication between its different parts, Kelly Weiss and Ricardo Basbaum took on the different types of space as playgrounds. She and he come then to certain kind of ‘agreements’.

AH! OH! and À votre contact, se confondre [At your contact, blending in] both respond to specific logics of scores and ‘mise en scène3’. These are fluid, however, and open to the collaboration of the publics, who become the guarantors of the constant evolution and even reconstruction of the exhibitions themselves.

“I like to experiment with materials. I began to develop my work by observing urban and industrial spaces. I try to reproduce surfaces, take materials in hand and translate gestures seen elsewhere. If I had to talk about a method, I would say that I try to move and replace. My conception of painting is above all a matter of reframing.”4

Kelly Weiss (b. 1996, Belfort, France; lives and works in Lyon, France) is a painter whose practice extends to sculpture, space, installation and performance. In her work, she incorporates reclaimed industrial materials such as lorry tarpaulins, sheets, pallets and even rust, which she extracts from altered metal elements, creating site-specific pictorial projects that engage in a dialogue with the place in which they are deployed.

Kelly Weiss considers that her artistic approach and her specific interest in the peripheries5 are linked to the industrial context of the area where she grew up. This influences in part the type of materials she uses, but also her creative process, which is strongly driven by the logic of wandering and collecting. The latter imbues the works with the vibrancy of memories of fragments collected or situations observed. The artist believes that her practice can only develop from this mutual contribution between her painterly gesture and the new elements that present themselves to her when she crosses spaces and territories. The allusive dimension of her work resists an approach based on meaning, in favor of one based on sensation, vibration and even diversion.6

The materials, whatever their origin, are approached pictorially and as surfaces, explored according to their different states and/or through various plays on scale. Their installation highlights the interplay of light and shadow, and echoes the context in which they are displayed. It encourages the bodies to move, then sometimes to stop or slow down. To describe Kelly Weiss’s artistic work, we could quote Manny Farber on what he calls ‘termite’ art: ‘an ambulatory creation which is an act both of observing and being in the world, a journeying in which the artist seems to be ingesting both the material of his art and the outside world through a horizontal coveragel’.7

“My environment and my practice infiltrate each other; most of my pieces are intended to fit into the context in which they are installed, or at least to reflect it. It is in a dialogue with the site that they unfold part of their meaning. Through discreet interventions full of minute details, and tangible images/modules, I seek to give my work a presence and a troubled consistency, which questions its framework.”8

For the exhibition at 19, Crac, the artist’s initial interest was in the architectural features of the exhibition rooms on the mezzanine floor. In addition, and in connection with the local industrial history, Kelly Weiss began a general reflection on the materials she could collect in the area, following on from some of her experiments with iron filings, salt water and domestic textiles.

During her visits and wanderings, both inside and outside the art center, Kelly Weiss developed a body of objects resembling flat surfaces or models. Architectural elements are replayed through different scales and materials to become sculptures, paintings and installations. The surfaces and objects become architectural elements in the context of the exhibition. The ensemble is based on the measurements of the exhibition rooms, taking visitors on a physical and sensory experience of the space.

The exhibition as a whole is conceived as a variation on the ‘box’ or ‘white cube’ form, which multiplies the projections of real and potential spaces in the exhibition by placing the mezzanine in a mise en abyme. The artist’s appropriation of an impersonal place as her own opens other possible outcomes for visitors, while playing on the ambiguity of ‘the concept of threshold [which] is broader than that of the door. It can refer to mental thresholds, to the idea of establishing connections in one’s brain, in one’s dreams. “The in-between is also a metaphor: you can get lost. […] The threshold is the element of depth - the infinity of the ground you are standing on9”. Everyone is thus placed in a position of waiting and observation, like the artist before them. Is it then an enigma to be solved based on personal analogies: “ruins, twilight undergrowth, boundless beaches, deserted stadiums, abandoned gardens […] These places only opened onto other similar places, always leaving the dreamer’s anxiety or wonder in suspense - and it was this very extension that had to be suggested10”.

AH! OH! and À votre contact, se confondre are two exhibitions that aim to move the uses of the art center by generating, through different forms and devices, situations of hospitality and action, ‘capable of stimulating new relationships [and] allowing hospitality to be interpreted in such a way as to create new terrains11’. Each of them, in their own way, adopts a well-established position as observer and creator of situations. They draw on the artistic experiments that may have gone before them, aware of the fertility of the avant-garde, while leaving room for the spontaneous and inescapable upheavals of the relationship that is being written in the present.

“The world needs new trends in ‘poeting’ and ‘paintry’ […] because we see with our ears and hear with our eyes”.12

Adeline Lépine
Exhibitions curator

_____

  1. Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin for English translation, 1974
  2. Reference to Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (Penguin for English translation), 1957. A classic of philosophy, Gaston Bachelard’s book uses literary images to explore the imaginary dimension of our relationship with space, focusing on intimate spaces. By focusing on the power of imagination and daydreaming, the author aims to explore other ways of ‘inhabiting the world’.
  3. As defined by Camilla Murgia in her book, Staging and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century France: Appearing, Revealing, Disappearing, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023. This book brings together a number of texts dealing with ‘staging’ in the visual arts and the way in which it is historically linked to pedagogical logics, the affirmation of a certain political consciousness, and the emergence of principles of cultural consumption. ‘Staging’ also implies principles of visibility and invisibility, not only for works of art but also for individuals and for various positions and realities.
  4. Kelly Weiss, preliminary notes to the invitation to 19, Crac.
  5. We could also have used the term ‘banlieue’ here, which also contains a strong evocative potential that is widely used in artistic creation, particularly poetry and literature. The word ‘banlieue’ is polysemous and a vector of imaginary worlds. Thierry Paquot defines it as a ‘singular plural’ (Banlieues, une anthologie, EPFL Press, Espace en société collection, 2008).
  6. The artist mentions, for example, “attempts and abandonments of paintings in the public space in 2018 (where there is more to see around than on the canvases)” during an interview in June 2024. Dissemination may be another factor in the reception of his work.
  7. Manny Farber, Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies, New York: Praeger, 1971, p. 10.
  8. Kelly Weiss, cp. cit.
  9. Quote from Cristina Iglesias in her interview with Jan Garden Castro ‘Place as Threshold: A Conversation with Cristina Iglesias’ in Sculpture, 1 October 2018.
  10. André Hardellet, Le Seuil du jardin, Julliard, 1958. Edition consulted: Gallimard, ‘L’Imaginaire’ series, 1993. English translation suggested by the author of the press release.
  11. Maja Ćirić, “the unspoken abuse” in Hospitality, Hosting relations in exhibitions. Direction d’ouvrage : Beatrice von Bismarck, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Sternberg Press, 2016.
  12. Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters, Preface-Manifesto for the PIN magazine project, 27 December 1946.

Infos utiles



Kelly Weiss’ exhibition is supported by Ibis Style Montbéliard center Velotte. Kelly Weiss would particularly like to thank Adeline Lépine, Joffrey Guillon, the entire team at 19, CRAC, Jules Maillot, Anne Bertrand, Alexandre Caretti, Agathe Berthou, Iwan Warnet, Ugo Sebastiao and the Archives of the City of Montbéliard.

Download our press kit

Kelly Weiss, Périphériques [Peripherals] series, plasterboard, balsa, spruce, plastic, cardboard, 2024
Kelly Weiss, Sur la grève, oil, acrylic, iron powder on canvas, 2024. Périphériques serie, plasterboard, balsa, spruce, plastic, cardboard, 2024. Exhibition view A sort of a song, CAP – Art center of Saint-Fons. Photo: Blaise Adilon
Kelly Weiss, Périphériques [Peripherals] series, plasterboard, balsa, spruce, plastic, cardboard, 2024
Kelly Weiss, Périphériques [Peripherals] series, plasterboard, balsa, spruce, plastic, cardboard, 2024
Kelly Weiss, Périphériques series, 2024, photo Anne Bertrand