h(H)istoires: Jean-Marc Cerino, Nicolas Daubanes, Christelle Franc, Éric Manigaud - Cur. Fanny Robin, Philippe Roux, Pascal Thevenet

The Galerie Sator, the Fondation Bullukian and the magazine De(s)générations are joining forces to tackle a cross-cutting issue: what makes history? There is the history told by the victors. There is the silent history of the vanquished. However, this remains in the « order of discourse »¹.
Vincent Sator, Director of the eponymous gallery, knows this to the extent that he defends an art that questions history, that doesn’t just tell it or keep it quiet, but makes it work with complexity. The artists represented by this gallery, Jean-Marc Cerino and Éric Manigaud, are among those who work on History and histories. For this group show, they are joined by Christelle Franc and Nicolas Daubanes. h(H)istoires crosses the respective works of these four artists, all of whom have contributed at one time or another to the history of the magazine de(s)générations.

Applying and overturning; altering and corroding; incising and superimposing; sprinkling and depositing histories and History are all gestures that result in combinations that are said to be small or large. h(H)istoires exposes these of the defeated, which are invisibilised, and those of the triumphant, which are blinding. The power of doing of these four artists has made history by making History their material. They demonstrate its plasticity. By forming the form h(H)istoires, the artists Cerino, Daubanes, Franc and Manigaud exert the forces of POWER-to-do and KNOW-how-to-undo to revive the mechanics of historical KNOWLEDGE.

This exhibition is part of a form of visual dialogue with the magazine de(s)générations, which for 19 years has been constantly questioning and combating the discourse of triumphant neo-liberalism, which states that without an adversary, the capitalist system is the one-way street of humanity. End of story... Yet the logic of neo-liberalism is that of a ‘grand narrative’ in which the devastation of mankind and the world is set up as a value. To counterbalance this, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Georges Didi-Huberman, Marie-José Mondzain, Nathalie Quintane and Valérie Jouve, among many other intellectuals and artists, have offered de(s)générations their thoughts, poems and images, as well as their sensitive and conceptual intelligence.

h(H)istoires also has another echo in Lyon, at the Fondation Bullukian art centre, where the four artists will be on show from April 25 to June 29 2024. 

Fanny Robin, Philippe Roux et Pascal Thevenet,
curators of the exhibition