Charlotte Charbonnel is the guest at this summer's exhibition, musée réattu | sur mesures, in her first solo exhibition in a museum. This invitation forms part of the Réattu museum's tradition of offering artists - both young and established - their first institutional show.
Charlotte Charbonnel works at the fringes of science and art. Her approach incorporates installations that mingle video, sculpture and sound, and to which she applies mechanics, electronics and computer technology as well as aesthetics.
For five years, she has pursued this cross-disciplinary work, in which the boundaries between different media are blurred, in a sort of hybridisation of forms or porosity between image, volume and sound.
It is an approach which draws additional support and exchange from the places in which she works, entering into close dialogue with the space. She often highlights the sound of materials, revealing their auditory aspect through the use of audio or acoustic devices.
For this event (her first institutional exhibition), the artist combines art from different periods.
One of the exhibition areas is thus devoted to the notion of research, and takes the form of a laboratory-workshop that reveals the central role played by experiment in her work. Similarly, in the final work, she shows what she calls "the entrails", in order to highlight the creative process, using various techniques to decipher, through example, how an images is "born"... out of a photograph, a material, a desire, a place. In so doing, she uses as many necessary elements as techniques, passing by a multitude of routes and scenarios.
Natural and physical phenomena often form the starting point and inspiration of her research. Through an exploration of different scientific fields, such as as meteorology, acoustics and seismology, the artist seeks out the means of renewing our perception of the world. Scientific discoveries fascinate and feed her reflections, and help her understand the world and the objects that surround it by listening to energy, waves, vibrations and so on.
Within her installations, a blend of sculpture, sound and video, the spectator plays an important role; he may be incited to activate the artist's propositions. Stethospheres, a collective audio installation appearing as part of the exhibition, invites visitors to manipulate five spheres containing different materials and listen to their polyphony in real time. It is a way of examining what we see.
The arrangement she designed for the Réattu Museum reflects her sensitivity to the magic of the setting and its underlying magnetism. Her new installation enters into a dialogue with its poetic aspects. It rises to the challenge of bringing the Rhone into the building. Running close by the museum, the river is ever-present yet hidden by a dike, tantalising and elating us by its nearness. That situation immediately appealed to the artist and captivated her, reactivating for her the importance of energy, the key element of her work.
