SHIFT PATH Artistic residency in Chiang Mai
In April 2018 Tristan Deschamps, curator, invites Naomi Maury and Damien Fragnon, Lyon artists, to participate in a collective exhibition in Berlin.
Following this exhibition, the trio decided to form a lasting relationship between artists and curator.
From March 1st to May 31st they will stay in Thailand for a Residency in Chiang Mai.
This Residency makes part of SAC Art Lab and Residency Program developed by SAC the Art Center and is supported as well by Institut français and City of Lyon and French Embassy.
And the end of the residency, one exhibition will be organized in Chiang Mai and one in Bangkok at SAC the Art Center.
S.A.C. Residency Program is established for supporting artists and curators. The program takes place in Chiang Mai, north of Thailand. The theme for this year’s residency is sustainability. Artists are welcome to interpret this term in whichever direction that best fits with their research and practice. In this age of digital communication and mass-produce consumerism, everything seems to be moving and going at a fast pace. Unwanted excess is disposed of, fads and novelties seem to be more important than quality and durability. SAC invite them to use their art and creativity to discuss about sustainability, whether in the sense of culture, environment, business, spirits, the art world, traditions, relationships, or anything that inspires them.
Maori Maury and Damien Fragnon work in Décines (15 km from Lyon) Les Ateliers du Grand Large are available to young artists who have graduated from the region's art schools. More than 2000 m2 of premises dedicated to about forty artists' studios. Fifteen artists graduated from ENSBA Lyon, about fifteen artists from the Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble-Valence, and Saint-Étienne art schools benefit from a workshop made available for a renewable period of one year.
Naomi Maury’s research will focus on the climate issues, vegetation and impact it can have on the architecture and attitudes of inhabitants. This work will result in immersive sound and sculptural installations.
Damien Fragnon wishes to work on the evolution of material through time and climate. The result will show the relationship between life and our world today through an installation.
Tristan Deschamps’ research will be conducted on the work of Maury and Fragnon in connection with the work of emerging Thai artists. This research will be translated into a text which will accompany a collective exhibition and a publication as well.
Naomi is currently working with ceramics, building forms that resonates from the direct surroundings of the S.A.C. Art Lab in Mae Rim, Chiang Mai.
Maury Naomi, born in Bédarieux, in 1991, lives and works in Lyon. She is graduated of ESAAA Annecy.
Naomi Maury's work is based on notions of sub-optimality such as slowness, redundancy, randomness, heterogeneity, inefficiency. They are the traces of his relationship to the world, partly due to his malformation of the feet. His work emanates from quasi-architectural forms where the notion of time is disturbed. We no longer know if what we see is the beginning of a construction or destruction. We can contemplate the ambiguity of a foundation that is going through ruin.
She tries to immerse the spectator, to leave him a place - physical - where he can walk inside the families of sculptures. The behavior he adopts is the continuity of forms. It can find its place. To give him a place so that he can imagine that at any time these sculptures can come out of their resting state, stand up from their soft posture as when we disconnect from our screens to go back to a more physical activity. These sculptures are flabb and tired like society.
They are part of a near future where everything would be reduced, a future where construction would no longer take the lexical field of architectural materials but would use the least expensive, most abundant.
Damien started gathering material he found in in the garden of the farm where the artist studio is located. Those elements will be playing a key role in the upcoming show in Chiang Mai and in Bangkok.
Damien Fragnon, was born on 21 June 1987 in Clermont-Ferrand, lives and works between Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon. He is graduated of ESAAA Annecy.
The era is one of performance, speed and actions that produce events that are both media and ephemeral. Damien Fragnon creates living paradigms that confuse art and life. He creates forms through scientific discoveries, various facts, everyday gestures that he moves to give a new facet more poetic, more eccentric and sometimes more visionary. In a hybrid way between installation and narrative, he invents stories to reclaim. Each installation is a story module, allowing us to move from one here to another along a device.
Tristan Deschamps,
Tristan Deschamps (b. 1992, Beuvry) is an independent curator and writer based in Berlin. Tristan studied at Maastricht University where he completed his MA in Arts and Heritage in 2015. He has since worked on several international exhibitions with diverse galleries and project spaces, including PS120, S.A.C. Bangkok, NgBK, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, and NON Berlin. Tristan also co-founded the project space +DEDE in 2018.
