Curator: Alice Motard
Borrowing its title from the eponymous collection of poems by the Japanese author Tamura Ryûichi (1923–1998), the exhibition Le Monde sans les mots (The World with no Words) brings together a body of paintings, a series of copper and ribbon assemblages, and two new site-specific works by the French artist.
Sacriste’s practice could be described as ‘expanded painting’, since the artist is as much interested in the history and techniques of the medium as in its iconography. Although she frequently works in other mediums, such as sculpture, ceramics or installation, she always does so in order to speak about painting or make painting speak (with no words).
The myth of the origins – of beings and images, and by extension language – runs through the entire exhibition, which unfolds like a long sequence of painted canvases and sculptures that are duplicated and repeated – identical, yet never quite the same in terms of texture, framing or format.
These new works, most of which were produced specifically for the CEAAC, oscillate between abstraction and figurative representations of nature and fragmented bodies, and can be seen to stand in a direct relationship with the Art Nouveau space in which they are displayed.
For her exhibition at CEAAC, the artist was supported by the Cnap. She also benefited from a production residency at Atelier Cobalt in Strasbourg.