Stéphanie's School

For three days, Life is a Bed of Roses (a novel) exhibition plays host to the sixth version of “Stéphanie’s School”, proposed by Stéphanie Moisdon, which takes place in a space modelled on the minimal functions of a classroom.

Its image has been devised by Pierre Joseph, who defines it as follows: “The space incorporates a series of twelve photographs of stained glass windows, a blue carpet, a conference table, audio-visual equipment, and a sufficient number of seats. The whole thing might immediately conjure up a classroom for catholic instruction, but this is not really the challenge here. The series of images, taken without any documentary brief or demanding framing, refers us more to tourist photographic volleys than to a scholarly reading of religious iconography. Despite this, as the outcome of chance and different parameters, including sunshine on Notre-Dame cathedral, where these photos were taken, on that particular day, with regard to lens/subject distance, focus and exposure, just one scene of stained glass windows has been chosen. It involves a frequent motif in Christian art, the tree of Jesse, in a version restored by Viollet-le-Duc. So in it it is possible to see and read a fragmented allusion to Jesus’s genealogy, and thus to history and transmission in the broad sense. The background for each of the characters in these stained glass windows is blue, as is the carpet which fills the space of the classroom, so, in spite of themselves, the arrangement includes the visitor and pupil in this “story”…

These serial images are thoroughly decorative, nonetheless, and in this way, and on this chord, they play with the rest of the show.”

The prototype of “Stéphanie’s School” is neither a fiction nor a parody, but the pilot for a school, a situation prompted to shift and be renewed, as has been the case, since its creation in 2006, with “La force de l’art”, the contemporary art triennial in Paris.

“Stéphanie’s School” is a space of for projecting, working on, transmitting and sharing knowledge. A small temporary school where issues of imagery, representation and language freely circulate. A place freed from rules and authority, and from classifications and disciplines, which functions without either programmes or handbooks.

Throughout the exhibition, “masters” and “mistresses” intervene at a busy pace. They are not trying to rule, they invent relationships and personal trajectories, and educational methods and tools. They teach a lesson in things, a lesson in words, for the duration of a classroom period.

With Philippe Azoury, Daniel Baumann, Nicolas Bourriaud, François Cusset, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mélanie Matranga, Charles de Meaux, Jean-Claude Moisdon, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Arnaud Viviant.

Thursday, July 2nd

3pm – 4pm   Charles de Meaux

4pm – 5pm   Nicolas Bourriaud

5pm – 6pm   Daniel Baumann

6pm – 7pm  Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Friday, July 3rd

3pm – 4pm   François Cusset

4pm– 5pm  Lili Reynaud Dewar

5pm – 6pm   Mélanie Matranga

6pm– 7pm   Jean-Claude Moisdon

Saturday, July 4th

4pm – 5pm   Philippe Azoury

5pm – 6pm  Arnaud Viviant