The Fondation CAB in Saint-Paul-de-Vence is hosting an exhibition devoted to the historic artists of the Supports/Surfaces movement and other artists from the contemporary scene

Partenaires particulaires, from 14 March to 2 November 2025

Partenaires particulaires
SUPPORTS, SURFACES, DISSÉMINATION
Curator: Hugo Vitrani

The Fondation CAB Saint-Paul de Vence is hosting an exhibition devoted to the historic artists of the Supports/Surfaces movement and other artists from the contemporary scene, curated by Hugo Vitrani (curator of the Palais de Tokyo)

Supports/Surfaces is an artistic movement that was one of the founding groups of French contemporary art, both in painting and sculpture.

Under the umbrella name of Supports/Surfaces, a group of artists, most of them from the south of France, held four collective exhibitions between 1970 and 1971, sharing common theoretical and artistic ideas. In the early 1970s, André-Pierre Arnal, Vincent Bioulès, Louis Cane, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Toni Grand, Bernard Pagès, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour, André Valensi and Claude Viallat exhibited together under this name. A singular feature of the movement during this period was that most of the artists claimed to be painters - with the exception of Bernard Pagès and Toni Grand - although the works did destabilise the viewer, who was used to stretched canvases.

The exhibition Partenaires particulaires acts like a field of (sometimes bad) seeds, starting with a knot that brings together a dozen historic works by Supports/Surfaces. This code name for an avant-garde movement, short-lived but still very much alive, marked the history of the French art scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s through a return to abstract painting in a raw version, augmented by a healthy dose of know-how. Paintings without brushes, paintings without stretchers, folded and burnt canvases, assembled wood, stamped prints.

These lines served as a manifesto for La peinture en question, the first exhibition of a group that continued to grow and to criticise itself, only to abandon itself publicly.

In 1969, Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze, Patrick Saytour and Claude Viallat asserted: ‘The object of painting is painting itself, and the paintings exhibited relate only to themselves. They do not appeal to an ‘elsewhere’ (the personalitý of the artist, his biography, the history of art, for example). They offer no escape, because the surface, through the ruptures of form that are operated upon it, prohibits the viewer's mental projections or dreamlike ramblings.

The exhibition also features works by other artists, both past and present, from London, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Martinique and Paris. Kapwani Kiwanga, Brandon Ndife, Robert Overby, Ernest breleur, Renée Levi, Jack O’Brien, Miho Dohi, Myriam Mihindou, Ladji Diaby, Torkwase Dyson, Melinda Fourn, Edith Dekyndt, Hall Haus…

From painting to moving images, sculpture and design, the Fondation CAB is bringing together a wide range of practices that manipulate the primary imaginations of precarious materials, from prints to decomposed compositions, operations, moving and luminous abstractions, assemblages and recycling, and so on. So the stakes / the game are in overcoming blinkers, postures and boundaries that play on System D, the particle of matter.

Partenaires particulaires
14 March - 2 November 2025
Fondation CAB Saint-Paul-de-Vence
5766, chemin des Trious
06570 Saint-Paul-de-Vence
France

With:

André-Pierre Arnal, Vincent Bouliès, Ernest Breleur, Pierre Buraglio, Louis Cane, Edith Dekyndt, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Ladji Diaby, Miho Dohi, Noël Dolla, Torkwase Dyson, Fred Everlsey, Melinda Fourn, Kapwani Kiwanga, Renée Levi, Myriam Mihindou, Brandon Ndife, Jack O’Brien, Robert Overby, Bernard Pages, Jean-Pierre Pincement, Patrick Saytour, Claude Viallat & Hall Haus

Curator: Hugo Vitrani