fred forest 23 june - 5 august 2017 press release galeriepact.com - info@galeriepact.com 70 rue des Gravilliers 75003 Paris Mardi - Samedi de 11h à 19h @galerie_pact pact
Fred Forest Space Media, extract from Le Monde newspaper, 12 January 1972 Collage and felt on newsprint 50 x 33,5 cm - 19.7 x 13.2 in. Courtesy Galerie pact
Press release 1/2 pact is delighted to announce the first solo exhibition of Fred Forest in a gallery for the past 10 years. it will gather a selection of historical and iconic works from the artist : his Space Medias, project in the newspaper Le Monde in 1972 and the Mètre carré artistique (Artistic meter square) from 1977. On show from june 23 rd to august 5 th, Fred Forest exhibition will be showing concurrently with his retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, from july the 12 th to august 28 th, curated by Alicia Knock. The opening will be held at the gallery on thursday june 22nd from 6 to 9 pm, at 70 rue des Gravilliers, 75003 Paris. Born in 1933 in Mouaskar, Algeria, Fred Forest is a French self-taught artist who lives and works in Paris. He developed a strong interest in telecommunications after working as a postal service employee on the Moroccan border. In the 1960s, he became a satire cartoonist for the newspapers Combat and Les Echos, and then a professor of «Sciences of Communication and Information» at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. Co-founder of two historical artistic movements: Sociological Art, with Hervé Fisher and Jean-Paul Thénot (1974),and The Aesthetics of Communication, with Mario Costa (1983), Forest is a multimedia artist considered as a pioneer of video art and Net Art. Well known for his political or sociological actions in the media and for his criticism of the institutional power, Fred Forest is also a theoretician of art, author of a many books, seminars and conferences. In 2004, his entire body of work became part of the National Heritage, allowing people to consult over three hundred works in the INA archives. Having made the choice to remain outside the art market since the beginning of his career, in order to keep a total freedom of thought and speech, Fred Forest, who stopped producing at 84 years old, is finally integrating the art market today. To represent his whole body of work he chose Galerie pact, a young galery passionated by the avant-garde, unusual technology and artistic techniques. Galery pact will shed the light on two emblematic actions from the 1970s: Space Media, an authentic sociological fresco initiated by Forest in 1972, which integrates a blank space in a page of Le Monde, inviting readers to consider it as a platform of expression, a space to fill out before sending it back to the artist in order to take part in a collective participatory work. Later on, the blank space will also appear in several other newspapers and on television. The other project is the Mètre carré artistique (Artistic Square Meter), which in 1977, turns a square meter of real estate into a work of art doomed to speculation, a speculation Fred Forest stages and denounces. I. Space-media, 1972 Forest s Space Media series are open works, «implication machines», that break the separation between media producer and recipient, between artist and public. «With this artistic device, people are sucked into a common event and become part of a process that feeds itself from their responses.» «This could be the formula for «the art of implication»: to incite creation instead of imposing it», wrote Pierre Levy in 1995. «Forest has always thought that new media information s «surface» was an ideal and pertinent place for contemporary creation. In 1972, he already estimated that, from now on, art symbols should use new circuits and medium for creation, these new communication technologies». In 1972, his first Space Media integrates a blank space in the Arts section of Le Monde with the following text written beneath the space: «This is an experiment. An attempt to communicate. This white surface is offered to you by the painter FRED FOREST. Make it yours. By writing or drawing. Express yourself! The entire page of this newspaper will become a work. Your work. If you want, you can frame it. But FRED FOREST invites you to send it to him (4, résidence Acacias, L Hay-les-Roses-94). He will use it to conceive a «media art work «and will present it in an exhibition to soon be held at the Grand Palais.» Forest collects hundred of answers - ranging from drawings and insults to thanks and philosophical thoughts. He constitutes a sociological fresco, a reflection of an era, a participatory work of art with a human dimension. The Space Media gives us a foretaste of social networks, which are now the first platform of expression. That makes him a precursor and visionnary artist.
Press release 2/2 «Blanks» have been used by Fred Forest in different ways. Making its first appearance in printed press in 1972, the space to fill out invaded television with a minute of white on Channel 2 the same year, before travelling to Sao Paulo for the XII Biennale. In 1973, while Brazil was under dictatorship, the artist gave white picket fences with nothing written on it to passerbys. The march they initiated looked like a political protest against the absence of freedom of speech. On January 20, 1972, «Action: 60 seconds of white» is a televisual Space-Media that consists in interrupting the television program for a minute. It occurs during Télé-Midi (a TV show on Channel 2). When the image turns white, the viewers can hear Forest s pre-recorded voice explaining: «Your attention, please! Your TV receiver has not broken down. You are participating to a live experiment of Space Media. Bring the world back to its beginning. With white to start from zero, to start over, to invent the world as you wish. With free space, empty space to fill out.» II. Le mètre carré artistique (The Artistic Square Meter), 1977 In 1977, Fred Forest conceives «The Artistic Square Meter», a project that leads him to form an authentic real estate corporation promoting artistic square meters. The project aims to create a media event to denounce speculation by blurring the lines between real estate speculation and art speculation. In order to do so, he purchases a 20m 2 plot near the Swiss border, officially designated as «artistic» square meters in papers filed at the local survey register office. He places ads in Le Monde, in France, and in Die Zeit, in Germany, inviting readers to invest in a square meter presented as «artistic» and totally open to speculation. s A good investment, according to the ads. The provocation continues when he organizes a public auction at Espace Pierre Cardin to sale the first artistic square meter under the hammer of Mr. Jean-Pierre Binoche. But the District attorney (Crown prosecutor) blocks the sale. With a last minute trick, Fred Forest turns the artistic square meter into a «non-artistic square meter». Standing at his sides is the famous art critic and old accomplice Pierre Restany. While they are both giving a press conference, Pierre Restany states: «The fact that I am tied to the great undertaking of the artistic square meter, shows that, through a demystification of art, Fred Forest reaches the very roots of art. Which is beauty as a fetish object, beauty selling beauty as such. Before all else, an artistic square meter is just a square meter. Which means a totally abstract notion of geometry, and precisely one Descartes could meditate on, in the green field his mother gave birth to him. And the reference to the most simple and fundamental geometry data, the square meter, makes me think about what art, and art as such, can generate: understanding, compromise, connivance, pleasure, happiness, and a supplement of soul. With no doubt, this artistic square meter contains a supplement of soul that brings a sociological, poetic and human value to Fred Forest s project.» After the sale, the event was widely publicized and led Fred Forest to create, in the Oise region, in Anserville, 30 miles north from Paris, «The Territory of the Artistic Square Meter», a surface of one thousand square meters of land with each square meter drawn up on the ground (1000 plots of one square meter each). The place was declared an independent State within the French Republic by the artist and represents a seat of autonomous government. Buildings have many rooms outfitted with diverse installations and all the necessary equipment to allow a State to exert its power. The work titled «The Artistic Square Meter» includes plots of the territory of the artistic square meter (squares of paper of one square meter each, with printed numbers from 1 to 20), along with the Manifesto of the Territory, an authentic code of laws and manual for this conceptual art work. Two ads published in Le Monde in 1977 come in addition to these plots. These works will be shown at Galerie pact, as well as a video interview of Pierre Restany expressing himself about the artistic square meter.
Fred Forest Placez vos capitaux à la frontière suisse, 1977 Extract from Le Monde newspaper 50 x 33,5 cm - 19.7 x 13.2 in Courtesy pact
Fred Forest M 2 321, 1977 Print on paper 1 m. x 1 m. Courtesy Galerie pact Fred Forest and Pierre Restany during the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976 Courtesy Galerie pact