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2010 EDITION

July 3rd - September 19th

Julie Guiches - Crowd rug

Patrick Bouchain

UNPREMEDITATED (L'IMPENSÉ)

This exhibition marks the ten-year anniversary of the L’Impensé series published by Actes Sud. Directed by Patrick Bouchain, the series consists of books at the intersection of civics, election politics, architecture and building-sites, and which propose another way of thinking about architecture and landscape.

Devised as a vast installation, the exhibition occupies an entire 600m2 hall of the Magasin Electrique. Using Bouchain’s projects as its starting-point, it seeks to make architecture perceptible and centres on the work of five photographers: Marin Kasimir, Cyrille Weiner, Christophe Hutin, Loïc Julienne, Julie Guishes.

Their photographs—placed on the ground, suspended, projected or printed life-size on theatre sets, or stretched on huge tarpaulins—mark out a trail that is anything but rectilinear.

This exhibition extends outside the building under an awning, in a space designed like a huge outdoor lounge, with straw seating and native plants (called ‘weeds’), alongside market-garden plants, under brightly coloured construction-site tarpaulins that double as drapes.


Exhibition produced by Le Méjan

Patrick Bouchain
Born in 1945 in Paris. Lives and works in France.

An architect of cultural spaces and art centres, such as Le Magasin in Grenoble, Le Lieu Unique in Nantes (LU) and MIAM in Sète, Patrick Bouchain has also designed performance venues including the Théâtre Zingaro in Aubervilliers, the equestrian academy in Versailles for Bartabas, the Dromesko aviary, and the Grange au Lac in Evian. He has worked with contemporary artists such as Daniel Buren for the columns of the Palais Royal, Paris, and on the rings in Nantes; and with designers such as Philippe Starck for a timber house sold by mail order. Patrick Bouchain has staged large-scale public events such as the French Revolution bicentenary on the Champs-Elysées and the New Millennium celebrations, also in Paris. Architecture as taught and practised by Patrick Bouchain is sometimes termed HQH (Haute Qualité Humaine, high human quality).