PARIS & CRÉATION
Galeries Lafayette has invited 8 cultural institutions in Paris
to take over its shop windows along boulevard Haussmann
07 to 25 July 2009
General show opening
Tuesday 7 July, from 8:30-10 PM
The CENTQUATRE Display Window
The job of designing the CENTQUATRE display windows was given to Laurent P. Berger, a visual artist and set designer who was in residence at CENTQUATRE in 2007 and 2008. Working with the notion of reading, Berger has posted within each window, bathed in a different color, the sentence "the CENTQUATRE is a workplace for artists and audiences from around the world." This definition of the venue, translated into a multitude of languages, is given a different color each time, creating a wall covering for each window. Both playful and esthetic, the installation reflects the CENTQUATRE’s vocation to make available to the general public works of art in the process of development.
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BIOGRAPHY
Laurent P. Berger, a plastic sculptor, graduated from the Higher National School of Decorative Arts in 1998. He lived in Rome and New York before deciding to move back and settle in Paris.
Borrowing work procedures most notably from the fields of scenic art and cinema, he compares the relations between the public, time and space. His work uses hybridization to combine multiple media that offer different systems of representation and perception, and on each occasion re-invents exhibition and presentation protocols, producing creations, sculptures, architectures, performances, videos, photographs, publications and graphic elements. Most of his projects use fictional mechanisms.
In 1999-2000 he was awarded an Académie de France scholarship to Rome and is resident at Villa Médicis.
In 2006, he was involved in the 2006 Whitney Biennial in New York (Day for Night).
His work has been shown at numerous exhibitions abroad: at Villa Medicis in Rome (Jardin, 2000), the Festival Romaeuropa (2000), at the Art & Idea Foundation in New York (Truancy, 2001), at the Watermill Centre in New York (in 2002 and then in 2006), at Space in Progress/TBA21 in Vienna (Puppets and Heavenly Creatures, 2005), at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas (Pulsar, 2006), and at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico (Distor, 2006).
In 2007 he was involved in the Rock ’n’ Roll Vol. 1 exhibition held at the Norrköpings Konstmuseum in Sweden and then at the Sorlandet Art Museum in Kristiansand, Norway, and at the “Un teatre sense teatre” exhibition at MACBA, Barcelona followed by the Museu Berardo in Lisbon.
At the same time, he has worked in theatrical representation, opera and dance, producing scene designs and lighting in various different productions.
At the request of the CENTQUATRE, he has designed a pre-configuration graphic charter, produced by Nicolas Hubert between January and October 2007.
