CAC Brétigny

“Gap dynamics”
Curators: The CAC Brétigny team

Chloé Serre has a diverse, cooperative practice that mixes sculpture, writing and performance. Her works highlight the conventions that govern our everyday relations with our environment and with others. From her training in cognitive science and psychology, Chloé has preserved a keen interest in the study of sensory systems and cognitive biases, particularly those induced by objects. Her sculptural practice is guided by play and its haptic potential: the forms she conceives invite manipulation and repurposing.

In Agency (2021), a project conceived during a research-creation residency at La Galerie in Noisy-le-Sec, Chloé examined storytelling and the success story. With humor, she explored the ideology of the self-made man and the success rhetoric that underpins it as a commercial definition of happiness. To this end, in collaboration with a graphic designer and an engineer who specializes in gameplay, she designed a wooden board game where players generate their own success story with the help of sculptures and cards. The second part of this project was a filmed performance. In a cross between a TED talk and a personal development tutorial, Chloé sets out the AGENCY method of good storytelling. On the stage, the scenography created by the artist is made up of sculptures manipulated by the performers. This lecture setup, which glorifies personal journeys regarded as successful, is ridiculed through a performance that makes us laugh.

For the “Bascules” season, the CAC Brétigny is inviting the artist to continue these reflections on the question of the uses and gestures induced by objects and space. Our shared reflections will be part of Chloé’s continuing work on apparatuses designed for certain particular professional or recreational practices. For the project D’entrée de jeu (From the Outset, 2019), the artist reproduces an agility course through a set of sculptures, in which human and animal work together to overcome a series of obstacles. Along with her, we play with relations to others created by certain forms and different contexts.

Invited to do a co-creation residency with seventh-grade students from the Roland Garros middle school in Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, Chloé asks them to engage with multifunctional sculptural objects, like those she conceives for her performances. Although the artist’s sculptures often evoke utilitarian forms, they serve an entirely different purpose when activated. Together, the artist and the students scope out the objects that surround them day-to-day, and the functions they suggest, while reflecting on their possible uses and imagining how they could be diverted.

Elisa Klein

Chloé Serre (born in 1986) lives and works in Saint-Etienne. A graduate of the École supérieure d’art et design de Saint-Etienne, she enriches her practice through regular collaborations with live performance artists, as well as through her numerous meetings and co-creation sessions with various members of the public. Through sculptures activated in performances, she explores the rules that underpin human interactions. She participated in the 64^th Salon de Montrouge in 2019, the 19^th Hors Pistes festival at the Centre Pompidou, and several solo and group exhibitions, including at the macLYON (2021), and the Creux de L'Enfer in Thiers (2022).

This residency is part of an ACTE project supported by the Académie de Versailles.