This first monograph, richly illustrated with images and texts, offers a broad overview of the diversity of Marie-Ange Guilleminot's work spanning four decades.
This publication, abundantly enriched with images and texts, offers a broad view of the diversity of Marie-Ange Guilleminot's creation since 1986. For three years, the artist has devoted herself to the archives of the work to enable the creation of this reference work. The notion of urgency is omnipresent in the artist's career... a notion which Marie-Ange Guilleminot inherited in some way from her companion at the time: the artist
Absalon, who died at the age of 29 in 1993. This loss has now raised for her the question of legacy and that of transmission. His life, devoted to art, allowed him to make extraordinary encounters, and to be able to bring projects to fruition thanks to the support of numerous personalities and art lovers. This present book pays tribute to them. Each image, caption or notice is a link in this great weaving.
The choice of texts, of different natures, is brought together here chronologically. Some are unpublished, others have been published in his previous artist books.
This book shows the importance of the image. The nature of his work is largely ephemeral. Performances, improvisations and gestures… Often, photographs are the only traces. An essential place is given to photographic approaches of all kinds and different statuses: documentary, work in its own right, memories, reconstructions, spontaneous traces, initiatives of amateur photographers, creations carried out with other artists... This book, whose iconography is very rich in diversity, pays tribute to the photographers who invested in Marie-Ange Guilleminot and who, each in their own way, knew how to question the work, through the medium of the image. In particular, the photographs of
Pierre Leguillon, who captured his first steps, those of Florian Kleinefenn unpublished, also the images co-signed with
Jean-Luc Moulène, or those of
George Dupin as well as those of Lothaire Hucki, and alongside the artist with Michel-Ange Seretti who since 2008 offers a tailor-made point of view which will be born especially... for this book: with the complicity of Diane Arques, the artist who produced the very latest photographs placing Marie-Ange Guilleminot at the heart of her work during her exhibition at Maubuisson Abbey. We will find traces of Marie-Ange Guilleminot's artistic films, in the form of stills "filmographic photograms" extracted from creations made with Armande Chollat-Namy in recent years.
This publication thus offers the link, the interlacing, which allows us to understand the chosen title:
M.A. The Space that connects, constituting the antechamber to future works and an extension of those already created.
A graduate of
Villa Arson, Marie-Ange Guilleminot (born 1960 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye) lives and works in Paris. Active on the international art scene (Venice Biennale, Skulptur Projekte Münster, Jerusalem Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto Art Center, etc.), she is widely represented in public collections and has completed several commissions in public spaces. Since the beginning of her career, she has favored performance and film; in parallel, she is developing a work in progress centered around a house-artwork.
Marie-Ange Guilleminot envisions the exhibition space primarily as a place for living and research, where artworks define themselves through ongoing dialogue with each individual. Marie-Ange Guilleminot's oeuvre, remarkably diverse, encompasses performances, artist's books and films, photographs, installations, and "functional sculptures."
Nomadic in nature, Marie-Ange Guilleminot's artistic practice is attentive to the techniques of the countries and cultures she encounters. Each of her projects is an opportunity to explore local know-how and engage in dialogue with it. Ceramics, metal, glass, textiles, paper, wood—throughout her projects, the artist explores the various transformations of materials through numerous collaborations with artisans and technicians from around the world.
