Spring and summer exhibitions at the Château d'Aubenas

From April 11th, the new exhibitions for the spring/summer season at Château d'Aubenas invite visitors to take a fresh look at the world around us: materials, archives, mythologies and everyday gestures.

This spring, Le Château – Centre d’Art Contemporain et du Patrimoine d’Aubenas is launching a new season that explores the deep connections between stories, traces and imaginations. From the potato, a driving force behind underground and popular stories, to the prison memories revealed by Nicolas Daubanes, these two new exhibitions weave a dialogue between past and present, between modest gestures and narrative visions. These exhibitions invite us to take a fresh look at what surrounds us: materials, archives, mythologies and everyday gestures.

This new season thus opens a new chapter, guided by the desire to continue the Château's mission: to welcome artists, support audiences and make the venue a lively, welcoming space that is deeply rooted in its local area.

Artist details:

• Exhibition ‘DES PATATES’
  Provisional list of artists: Pilar Albarracín, Alice Allenet, Ziad Antar, Michel Blazy, Mégane Brauer, Lucas Chanoine, Elia David, Aurélie Ferruel and Florentine Guédon, Valerie Geissbühler Pacheco, Alain Guiraudie, HaYoung, Jacqueline de Jong, Raphaël-Bachir Osman, Serge Paillard, Giuseppe Penone, Sigmar Polke,
  Bruno Serralongue, Shimabuku, SMITH, Rozy Tergemina Sapelkine, Agnès Varda...
  Des Patates is a contemporary art exhibition that brings together the work of artists from different generations and nationalities around their love of potatoes. Behind this tuber from the Andes, the first specimens of which are said to have been cultivated in France in the Ardèche region, lies a multitude of stories: tales of survival, migration, financial hardship and damaged land. But the potato also represents the joy of shared meals and forms of resistance that run underground before
  sprouting into works of art.
  Spread over two floors of the Château, the exhibition is accompanied by a programme combining performances and tastings, linked to the local area and beyond.

Curators: Simon Bruneel-Millon and Clémentine Planche

• Exhibition ‘MILLE SIX CENT SOIXANTE-DIX-SEPT’ by Nicolas DAUBANES:

The Château invites artist Nicolas Daubanes for an exhibition conceived as the first chapter of a research project on prison graffiti preserved in its basements. The title, Mille six cent soixante-dix-sept, refers to the date of the oldest graffiti currently found in the Château, the starting point for a sensitive and historical investigation.

Guided by his constant interest in spaces of constraint, areas of resistance and forms of clandestine writing, Nicolas Daubanes develops an approach that weaves together contemporary creation, prison history and exploration of the built environment. The exhibition will present several sets of pieces already produced by the artist — notably as part of research and residencies (Villa Médicis, etc.) — juxtaposed with inscriptions engraved in the stone of the Château, in order to bring stories, gestures and traces to life across time.

By combining contemporary creations with archives engraved in stone, he offers a new interpretation of this unique heritage. Conducted in partnership with researcher Fanny Lalande, this project launches an original programme combining art, humanities and heritage, transforming the Château into a place of study, creation and storytelling.

Curators: Jean-Denis Frater and Fanny Lalande

Pets allowed

Pets not allowed