Curator : Anabelle Lacroix

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This exhibition traverses the Archives of art criticism with a focus on experimentation. Rather than attempting to define a practice, the project aims to highlight the vocabulary chosen by art critics to apprehend contemporary art. To say that an exhibition or artistic event is ‘experimental’ can refer to an artistic methodology, or point to a lack of words to describe a practice that is not yet understood. What is experimental shifts through time.

Yet experimentation is an important notion for artists themselves, who often use it to challenge the established order. La Puce à l’Oreille is rooted in Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Dreier and Man Ray’s act of founding the first ‘experimental’ museum in New York, Société Anonyme (1920-1950). Through the notion of experimentation, this exhibition aims at creating connections between artistic practices and the avant-garde throughout the 20th century. The French expression ‘avoir la puce à l’oreille’, literally ‘to have a flea inside your ear’, means to have doubt. It’s a signal that there is ‘something else’, something to grasp or define. It’s a surrealist image that also points to the role of art critics.

ear’ means to have doubt, it’s a signal that there is ‘something else’, something else to grasp or define. It’s a surrealist image that also points to the role of art critics as such.

In partnership with the Archives des la critique d’art [Archives of art criticism] (ACA) and C-E-A (Association française des commissaires d’exposition) [French network of curators].