Surréalisme : Zones de contact. L'Afrique, l'Océanie et l'Amérique du Nord comme lieux de dialogue et de friction H+R ART CONSULT

H+R ART CONSULT will present a special exhibition intitled "Surréalisme : Zones de contact. L'Afrique, l'Océanie et l'Amérique du Nord comme lieux de dialogue et de friction".

Zones de contact : Surréalisme, Afrique, Océanie, Amérique examines the conceptual and material links between the Surrealist movement, its aesthetics and worldview, and works from Africa, Oceania and the Americas. In doing so, we wish to demonstrate that it is possible to move beyond the outdated narrative of “discovery” and “aesthetic affinities” that continues to underpin discourses on the relationship between Western modernities and so-called non-Western arts. The exhibition aims to place the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the center of the discourse, through two approaches, one conceptual and the other rooted in concrete examples.

The exhibition will highlight the centrality of dreams, the subconscious and the intangible in the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and how this echoes the concerns of the Surrealist movement as defined by André Breton in his 1924 Manifesto. The second will consider the Surrealists' direct engagement with these arts, whether by publishing them in their magazines, including them in exhibitions, devoting poetic writings to them, or through their collecting and sometimes trading practices, - all the while addressing the way in which these activities fit or stand at odds with the colonial context of the time.

Following anthropologist Mary Louise Pratt's (1991) definition of “contact zones” as social spaces of cultural encounter and friction, the exhibition will offer a historically and theoretically grounded approach to the dialectic of non-Western art and Surrealism in the interwar period. Our aim is to demonstrate the existence of an ensemble of capillarity, even as Breton, in 1955, declared: “The inspiration we were able to draw from their art remained ultimately without effect, for want of an elementary organic contact, leaving an impression of rootlessness” - and to place the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the center of the narrative and not as a footnote to the history of Surrealism. The story thus re-articulated is that of a complex relationship that finds its source in a new order of art history established in the West at a time of profound shifts in world powers and the apogee of the colonial enterprise.

The exhibition combines two distinct but overlapping approaches:

Section 1 - Dreaming, the unconscious and immateriality in the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- When Baiame dreamed the world: The mythical time of Australia's aboriginal people
- Dream supports: Headrests
- Trance and “extra-ordinary” states
- Words as connectors and activators
- Vision: Dreams as inspiration

Section 2 - Surrealist commitment: A history of appropriation
- Surrealism and imperialism: Between contribution and denunciation
- Market and desire
- Poetry and the marvelous
- Journals: Analogies and otherness
- Exhibitions: Chance encounters

The exhibition runs from September 3 to 21, 2024 at the Charles-Wesley Hourdé gallery, co-curated by Yaëlle Biro (for the conceptual note), and Nicolas Rolland (for the selection of works).

A catalog will be published for the occasion.

Here are the three key ideas we wish to highlight:
- Rather than arbitrary aesthetic “affinities”, concrete points of contact link Surrealism to the historical arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
- The dream and the other world are central concepts for the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, as well as for Surrealism.
- A close examination of the Surrealists' engagement with the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, through publications, exhibitions and political opinions, allows us to better understand Surrealism as a major artistic movement of the 20th century, while repositioning the so-called non-Western arts at the center of the narrative of 20th-century art history.

Organized in partnership with the Centre Pompidou, the Association André Breton and the Comité des Galeries d'Art.