Comic troopers, bearded women, tamers of the jumping bean: when interrogated about how I come to do art and what my artistic motivation is, my mind wanders to the fair and the carnival, to a freak show of characters, a gallery of species, substances and stories. I relate to my practice through personas, through the embodiment and animation of concepts and feelings, through the Rabelaisian spectacle that lets myths come to life and facts melt to forms. The grotesque and the primitive that is encapsulated in every motion of our life is always ready to explode. I am a thwarted anthropologist, a wanna-be witch, a profane devotee, a poet and a butcher. Crust of humus, magma of pigment, puddle of mind. A cheeky satyr’s face sits upon the body of the whitest whale.
Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is an Berlin-Rome based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing.
Selected solo and group exhibitions, commissioned projects and screenings include: Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, DE (2021); Art Basel, Basel, CH (2021); INDEX – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, SE (2021); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, DE (2021); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2020); 1646, The Hague, NL (2019); Fondation Ricard pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, FR (2019); Thomaskerk, Amsterdam, NL (2018); Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, DK (2018); KRIEG, Hasselt, BE (2018); Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam, NL (2018); 57th Venice Biennale, IT (2017); Videoart Midnight, Babylon Cinema, Berlin, DE (2018); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, DE (2018); Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, NL (2018); Tate Modern, London, UK (2017); International Film Festival, Rotterdam, NL (2017); Futura, Prague, CZ (2017); Performa 15, New York, US (2015); The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, FR (2015); Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, CH (2015); University of São Paulo, São Paulo, BR (2015); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, US (2014); Centre George Pompidou, Paris, FR (2012); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, FR (2010); ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, DE (2010).
Curnier Jardin is the winner of the 2019 Preis der Nationalgalerie and recipient of the 2019/2020 Villa Medici Residency in Rome and the 2021 Villa Romana Fellows in Florence. She was the winner of the Dutch prize NN Award (2018) and laureate of the Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2017).
She was tutor at the Dutch Art Institute and teacher at Kunsthochschule Kassel. She is tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam since the past year. In 2015-2016 she completed a residency at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam
CV
Collaborators & Friends
Rio Terà dei Pensieri / Feel Good Cooperative / Primitive Film / Benni Atria / Antonio Giannantonio / Colin Ledoux / Christian Beck / Ana Teixeira Pinto / Giovanna Zapperi / Imogen Heath / Josefin Arnell / Nadira Husain / AMARD BIRDS / ERIAC / Rachel Garcia / Midget! / Margaux Parillaud / Tobias Haberkorn / Anna Reutinger / Eliot Dubois / Les Vraoums / Maja Nilsen / Constantin Alexandrakis / Karina Bisch / Das Dingbât / Hélène Delprat / Lucile Desamory / Grand Magasin / Nina Lassila / Marie Losier / Viviana Moin / Marie Proyart / Catriona Shaw / Sarah Tritz / Vision Forum / Art 21 / verse
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