“Le geste peint” (“The painted gesture”) is a travelling exhibition in a trunk of Carolyn Carlson’s graphic work in theatres, museums or any other venue where the dancer-choreographer and her company perform.
Carolyn Carlson has always written, drawn and painted in connection with her aesthetic reflection and her improvisation work. It is this studio practice, inseparable from choreographic creation, that the artist invites us to discover: notebooks, series of drawings of moving sets, stage sketches, but also intense inks inspired by our deep relationship with nature (water, air, waves, trees) and sculpting the space…
The hand seems to step into a primal world where the gesture precedes the pace.
Through poetry and line, the invisible becomes visible, as a counterpoint to the ephemeral gesture of dance that Carolyn Carlson likes to define as the art of an instant in time and space.
In June 2017, the museum La Piscine in Roubaix inaugurated a cycle of three exhibitions in France showing the choreographer’s graphic work to the public for the first time. The catalogue Writings on water, co-published with Actes Sud, followed this initiative. In a format adapted to each venue, the exhibition was shown at the Toulouse Lautrec Museum in Albi in spring 2018, at agnès b. in Paris in June 2018 and at the Chapelle du Méjan in Arles from November 2019 to February 2020.
The success of the exhibitions, the curiosity and pleasure shown by audiences both new and familiar with Carolyn Carlson, the interest aroused by the mediation and associated cultural events, the relevance of this “self-portrait” of the artist for the knowledge of her work, have led the Company to imagine a wider dissemination and mediation thanks to the concept of a malle-expo (exhibition in a trunk). Its aim is to make the graphic work and its profound relationship to the choreographic art of Carolyn Carlson known. Its “circulatory” design is adapted on the one hand to performance venues by providing them with a turnkey solution in terms of both content and display, and on the other hand to the life of a company that travels the world.
Hélène de Talhouët
Inks, drawings and accessories I Carolyn Carlson
Original idea and commissioning I Hélène de Talhouët
Design I Cédric Gerlus (Going Design)
Construction I L’Essence des Bois
Digital prints and panels I Ediprim
Coordination I Siham Lahkim
Thanks I Jean-Pierre Siméon, Studio Bloch, Actes Sud et Katia Dethilloy-Agnodice
Production I Carolyn Carlson Company
with financial support from Tilder