ART CONTEMPORAIN ET PATRIMOINES EN GRESIVAUDAN
Exhibition from 23 June to 1 September 2002

The photographs produced by laetitia benat and Guillaume Janot, take during their stay on the grounds of the thermal baths of Allevard-le-bains, will bear witness to the architecture of the site, its climate and its population.
The works by Christophe Gonnet, Christophe Morin and Bruno Tanant will reflect upon the site of Fort Barraux, its architecture, its place in the landscape.

ANCIEN CASINO D’ALLEVARD-LES-BAINS
PHOTOGRAPHS PRODUCED BY LAETITIA BENAT AND GUILLAUME JANOT

Laetitia Benat
Born in 1971, lives and works in Paris.

Since 1996, Laetitia Benat has been making videos of her friends and family in a variety of private settings as well as photographs ranging over a variety of functions (exhibition, reportage, fashion, and advertising).
Her close-framed images show fragments, details of abortive narratives. The atmosphere that emanates from these images suggests a kind of personal closeness, an intimacy on the part of the artist.
Bénat lived in the Hôtel des Thermes at Allevard just before it was opened to the public. Most of her photographs show what she saw from the windows or from her balcony there. These details of the spa convey the atmosphere of a deserted site where time is standing still, empty of action and narrative, waiting for its imminent reoccupation. The atmosphere is redolent of the Alain Resnais film Last Year at Marienbad, as well as the place where Marguerite Duras spent the last years of her life.

Guillaume Janot
Born in 1966, lives and works in Nantes.

After studying at the Ecole d’Art de Nancy, where he specialised in painting and sculpture, Guillaume Janot has worked mainly with photography.
His photographs contain subtle, archaeological traces of the genres to which they refer. He moves between landscapes, portraits and still lifes without privileging any particular one of the three. He also institutes a considerable distance from his subject, treating this as a kind of delayed reality. Thus in his first noted work, Non-lieu, the photograph of a construction site was silkscreened onto a 240 x 320 cm support and pasted up like wallpaper on the wall of grocer’s shop. The ensemble was then re-photographed complete with the shop’s shelves and accessories and this second photograph was again silkscreened and pasted up in the same way in the Office of Tourism.
Janot’s background in sculpture and concern with space is manifest in the hangings of his photographs and in his preference for non-standard formats.
Still, Janot remains very much a photographer, not a painter or sculptor. Some of his colour images could be considered as banal, based on the postcard or magazine aesthetic. At the same time, they have obvious visual qualities.
Janot lived in Allevard-les-Bains after the reopening of the spa there. He worked on a variety of subjects, alternating portraits and landscapes and mixing genres.
The resulting ensemble does not constitute a series but, rather, a mosaic corresponding to a “discovery, to a rather touristic approach to the site.”

FORT BARRAUX
INSTALLATIONS DE CHRISTOPHE GONNET, CHRISTOPHE MORIN ET BRUNO TANANT
Les travaux présentés portent sur l’ensemble du site du fort, de son architecture, de son inscription dans le paysage.

Christophe Gonnet
Born in 1967, lives and works in Saint Julien Molin Molette. (Loire)

Christophe Gonnet defines his work as follows:
“For some fifteen years my work has been exploring the vast field of the Idea of Nature, analysing different kinds of landscapes and, in particular, the work of the farmer. My sculptures, usually large-format installations designed for indoor locations, are characterised by their fragility and equilibrium.
The field, cultivated land, is a recurrent image in my work.
I am developing two projects for the site of Fort-Barraux. The first, a garden comprising 100 wheelbarrows filled with earth and plants, is being made with the cooperation of the local population, who have been invited to choose their plants and to appropriate individual barrow-gardens.
The ensemble can be recomposed and moved around to different parts of the fort, thus setting up a parallel between the aesthetic of the garden and that of military campaign plans. The second project is also a garden. This one is defined as a unique site that is isolated from the rest of the world because it is grown out of the earth, at a height of 5 metres, on the platform of lunette no. 13 (a lunette is an outer fortification). Its surface is covered with an evenly spaced grid of steel sheets, in the gaps between which plants will gradually grow up.

Christophe Morin
Born in 1976, lives and works in Saintes.

Christophe Morin studied design at the Fine Arts School in Nantes. In his early work, he designed agricultural buildings and hangers close to architecture. This has evolved little by little into an occupation he calls “artist-gardener”. His first noteworthy work was the creation of his “experimental garden” on a small piece of unused land located in his town. There he arranged discarded objects, abandonned planks and plants offered by his neighbors as well their gardening know-how. He also made gardening sheds out of recuperated materials that evoke his concerns regarding architecture. In Blois, he built sheds for goats, for example.
The project at Fort-Barraux that he is undertaking at the beginning of July uses the following idea as point of departure: “What I envisage to do on this site is to show to an attitude which is in reaction to its immobility. For me, immobility is an important factor of this site placed in retreat from - or even moreso, above - the ceaselessly growing activity down in the valley below. I also feel this immobility in the mass of the organized mineral that is collapsing bit by bit and slowly disintegrating.”
In certain chosen places amongst the ramparts, wooden scafolding-structures will be set up, attached to the ramparts in a way that will at once give the impression of supporting them and of penetrating them like a spontaneous vegetal element that has taken root on an abandonned wall.

Bruno Tanant
Born in 1959, lives and works in Paris.

Bruno Tanant is a landscape designer.
As a guest at Fort Barraux, he explored the various walks and vistas and analysed the perspectives.
Using his memories and photographs and drawings of the site, he then compared these to the different plans (ground plans, block plans, views of the entire zone, etc.). These were simplified, reduced to their bare essentials, made abstract. It was then possible to state the general concept as follows:
“The aim is to work on the fusion and juxtaposition of remote and multiple elements, on emotions which may never come together, on contradictory geometries, and thus to lead this work at Fort Barraux towards a form of abstraction in which horizons, characters and carefully organised series of objects jostle randomly together.”
Chairs, like the ones in parks and gardens, are laid out at various points in the fort, inviting visitors to discover selected views of the site. In the blockhouse, Bruno Tanant has worked on the contrast and development of vision, on the framing of scale and perception. For example, in front of the loopholes he has placed chaise longues, each one set at a particular height in order to afford a different point of view. “Each loophole presents a different light, different contrasts and different spontaneous vegetation. In the background, a bit of remote scenery can be seen (…). This interaction between foreground and background is configured differently at each moment of the day, in accordance with the climatic conditions. Experiences of the near and the far interact with one another.”