Magasin CNAC presents its inaugural programme La Position de l’Amour

Under the direction of its new director, Céline Kopp, Magasin CNAC reopens its doors to the public and artists. To commemorate this historic occasion, Magasin CNAC’s first program “La Position de l’Amour”—translated as: From this Position of Love—includes a variety of forms and is envisioned as a genuine invitation to open up spaces for meetings and debates via the experience of art.

La Position de l’Amour is the title of a group exhibition that brings together eleven artists around notions of engagement and love as practice—both as a way of knowing and as a way of being present to the world, and with others, that may lead towards ways of doing (with: Rebecca Bellantoni, Ivan Cheng, Ufuoma Essi, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Célin Jiang, Valentin Noujaïm, Prune Phi, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Anna Solal, and Alvaro Urbano).

In addition to the group exhibition, Magasin CNAC features Binta Diaw’s solo exhibition Paysages, curated by Alexia Pierre and Noémie Pirus-Hassid in partnership with ESAD Grenoble—Valence, in resonance with a festival developed by Simone Frangi and Katia Schneller. The “Festival des Gestes de la Recherche” will take place from November 21st to 24th, with a late night programming of performances, sound, and a series of encounters exploring the flexible notion of citizenship.

The program also features the launch of a series of new projects by Stromboli Design (Alexis Bondoux, Laure Jaffuel, Natacha Mankowski, and Clémence Seilles), which will be produced on-site throughout the year with a focus on sustainability (upcycling on-site materials, collaboration with local craftspeople and communities). These new commissions complement a repurposing of audience-focused spaces directed by Cookies, a design and architecture studio, as well as an experimentation on the institution’s visual past and future transitions by the graphic design team Alliage.

Lastly, Magasin CNAC is pleased to launch a residency programme as part of its new vision, valuing experimentation and peer to peer learning with artist Cindy Bannani (alum of ESAD Grenoble—Valence), and Giselle’s books cofounder Lucas Jacques Witz, as well as a core partnership with artist Xavier Antin and La Fabrique des Luddites, a housing project and cultural alternative project dedicated to the meeting of art, crafts, and ecology, installed in a former fabric in the rural Isère region.

A new turn for an emblematic venue

Magasin CNAC, with Céline Kopp as its new director, will maintain a radical sense of institution construction and change, while reflecting the reality we live in. It will portray itself as an institution that is artist-centered, audience-responsive, site-specific, and globally connected. Magasin CNAC, which opened in 1986 in a 1900 Eiffel structure refurbished by architect Patrick Bouchain, was one of the first projects in France to decentralize the visual arts landscape and is widely known as the home of the first ever curatorial program, launched in 1987. This emblematic institution has hosted monumental installations and major exhibitions, showcasing worldwide renown artists such as John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Ericka Beckman, Monica Bonvicini, Daniel Buren, Sylvie Fleury, Liam Gillick & Philippe Parreno, Mike Kelley, Sol LeWitt, Matt Mullican, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lawrence Weiner, alongside emerging talents.

In collaboration with Anna Colin, a study was launched this autumn 2022 as a first step in the renewal of the École du Magasin in order to respond to pressing challenges of our time, such as decompartmentalizing, decarbonizing, and decentralizing cultural institutions and professional practices, cultivating civic engagement, and expanding engagement in the field of ecological justice.