The French Academy Dictionary defines the “Pièce Montée” as a “large cake, erected so as to serve as ornament and often imitating architectural forms.” By using different but nevertheless comparable techniques of materials processing, of assembly and of construction, pastry offers a dreamlike and exuberant vision of architectural forms. Pauline Beaudemont’s art deals with this pastry eyes, moulding kugelhopfs, cakes and meringues in concrete to create totems that owe as much to Vatel than Le Brun, to Pierre Hermé than Le Corbusier, to Willy Wonka than the Doric order. The artist also made a habit of getting into modernist buildings. She haunts with her dreams, her images and her actions that modernity that obsesses us. Through her interventions, she reveals -in the photographic sense- a buried subconscious - perhaps a “hidden truth” in the words of Susan Sontag. By overlapping mental images whispered by the context, on symbolic places, the artist transforms the architecture into a projection surface, both of herself and her fantasized doubles. She reactivates the utopian nature of the monument, but according to the distorting mirror of multiple layers of representation, being specific to the artist herself, from the cinema, or from the collective imagination. A kind of supernatural acts through the process of transforming material. There is a miracle to watch egg whites being beaten, as there is to reveal an image in the darkroom. In return, there is some waste in the process. Utopia is pure ideal creation. As soon as it’s being exposed to reality, it deteriorates. The free movement of the mind is weighted by technical heaviness. This mechanism of enchantment and disenchantment is at the heart of Pauline Beaudemont’s work, which literally seeks to highlight mental strata, phantasmagorical screens and narratives that are inserted between idea and its materialization and between reality and its representation. From this game on apparition and retinal persistence spring, we suspected, the spectra, the ghosts and other lost souls that the first photography enthusiasts were looking to capture through the daguerreotype.
Vita
1983
Pauline Beaudemont is born in Paris, France
(lives and works in Paris)
2002—2006
ECAL in Lausanne
2011—2013
HEAD in Genève
2013
New Heads Fondation BNP-Paribas Art Award
2014
Residency Fieldwork – Marfa, Texas
2015
Atelier du FCAC-Genève, Berlin
2016—2017
Studio Roma – Instituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome
2016
Mountain School of Art, Los Angeles
Art Award Prix Irène Reymond
2018
Residency SoArt, Millstättersee, Austria
2019
Residency Gleis 70, Zurich
Selected Solo Shows
2019
SHAM – Jahn und Jahn (Showroom), Munich
2018
Predicament Escape – La Plage, Paris
2017
Macchia Aperta – Jahn und Jahn, Munich
2016
Stick To Me Fantasy (with Vanessa Safavi) – curated by Tobi Maier, Sao Paulo
Caravan – Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau
2015
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles – Xippas Art Contemporain, Geneva
2014
L’Age d’Or – SALTS, Basel
2m2 – Curated by Simon Lamunière and Christian Pirker, Geneva
2013
Gogo Papier (with Guillaume Dénervaux) – MJ Gallery, Geneva
The First and the Last Folding (with Martin Soto Climent) – Curated von Julia Marchand, Swiss Church, London
Selected Group Shows
2020
La photographie à l'épreuve de l'abstraction – Frac Normandie Roue, Rouen
(POSTPONED) CANONS – Galerie Derouillon, Paris
Your Friends & Neighbours – High Art Gallery, Paris
2019
STREIK! (Strike) – Grob Gallery, Geneva
Swiss Art Awards (nomination), Messe Basel, Basel
Restaurant Artemis Fontana (a project by Pauline Beaudemont) – Grand Café Bar, Basel
2018
40+10+1 – Jahn und Jahn, Munich
The way you read a book is different to how I tell you a story – Jahn und Jahn, Munich
Out of the box – Galerie Papier Gras, Geneva
2017
Tender Comrades – curated by Pauline Beaudemont, Studioli, Rome
New Heads Fondation – BNP Paribas Art Awards 5 years anniversary, Live In Your Head, Geneva
Young Popes – Latvian Institute Rome, Rome
I SCREAM YOU SCREAM WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM – curated by Clelia Collantonio, Fondazione Baruchello, Rome
2016
Finite Turn – Galerie Jahn Baaderstraße, Munich
Mirrors – curated by Elise Lammer, Duve Gallery, Berlin
Bourses Déliées – Halle Nord, Geneva
A pudding that endless screw agglomerates – curated by Eva Wilson, Polish Institute, Berlin
2015
Courtesy of Salts – Salts, Basel
Cluster – Sonnenstube, Lugano
Reverence and Reproach – screening, TATE Britain, London
Alpina Huus – curated by Elise Lammer and Denis Pernet, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin
2014
Bourses de la ville de Genève – Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva
Salon – Hard Hat, curated by Denis Pernet, Geneva
MJ – Les Urbaines, Lausanne
Storefront for Art & Architecture – curated by Sandra Teitge, Minneapolis
Plattform 14 – ewz-Unterwerk Selnau, Zurich
Kunsthalle Basel – curated by Adam Szymczyk and Fabian Schoeneich, Art Genève, Geneva
Tout Arrive – curated by Sylvain Menetrey, Exo, Paris
Le Corbusier Foundation’s Grant for Artistic Creation, Chandigarh, India
2013
Kunsthalle Roveredo – curated by Elise Lammer, MJ Gallery, Geneva
L’Entrepreneur – curated by Laurent Kropf, Crystal Palace, Bordeaux
C’est moi qui choisis / New Heads – curated by Marc Olivier Whaler, Live In Your Head, Geneva
Electric Fields – organised by Mai-Thu Perret, Live In Your Head, Geneva
The Mediterranean Dog – curated by Elise Lammer, Cole Gallery, London
Bold Tendencies – PAMI, Hanna Barry’s project space London
