Miscellaneous

The need to organize what cannot be sorted generates a miscellaneous file incorporating all that falls outside the templates of the available and familiar. Sorting, an action that helps us in our daily tasks, also underlies the curatorial action built on the attempt to catalog, classify, compare and find common themes. The group selected for the Edmond de Rothschild Center’s first incubator does not fall into any orderly artistic category. The freedom to explore themes, techniques and materials produces the eclectic mix on display in the exhibition space. Like leafing through the miscellaneous file, viewing the exhibition allows one to browse or wander among memories, references and images that have been preserved together as a group.

Eleven artists and designers, all recent art and design school graduates, were selected from among the many respondents to the program’s call for participants. They underwent a process of enrichment and personal creative development in the center’s incubator, with professional guidance steering them through the intimate process of working in a group. One of the goals of the incubator is to generate a platform that can accommodate creators in a wide range of fields. Their journey together over the last months is the defining element of their joint work. As part of the incubator program, participants met weekly with the center’s mentoring group. They took part in writing, production and curatorial workshops, and participated in discussion groups that allowed them to raise questions and share their difficulties during the creative process. These meetings are the heart of the incubator program and form the surrounding framework for the work leading up to the exhibition.

The wealth of works created especially for the exhibition reveals each participant’s artistic practice, sometimes through examination of form and material underlying the art or design work, and sometimes through study of narrative aspects in the works. Glass, textile, photography, video, painting, design, sculpture and installation pieces are spread throughout the gallery and in the building’s entrance. As in any exhibition, encountering works in a single space produces new readings and unexpected visual moments, adding more layers—signs of mutual influence that grew out of a shared journey.