The 2nd Belleville Biennale will be held from 15 September to 20 October next, occupying the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin (Belleville neighborhood), the Centquatre, various association premises, and artists’ studios, as well as public places. For just over a month, this multicultural neighbourhood will again become an arena for artistic experiments, with an eye on the national and international scene, through exhibitions and shows, artists’ interventions, and novel projects.

The mixture of people combined with the diversity of the cityscape in this “global area” is still a favourite source of inspiration for the Biennale’s curators. As an on-going territory of exploration, with its winding streets and steep inclines, Belleville is ideal for wandering. This year, once again, the Biennale’s organization will focus on increasing viewpoints on invisible locations, revealing a little known topography and becoming involved with cultural institutions like the Centquatre and the Maison des métallos.

Exhibitions
Answering a proposal made by Patrice Joly and Aude Launay, the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin will house a show on the theme of Revolutions (political, artistic, urban, architectural…), bringing together works by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Sam Durant, Claire Fontaine, Julien Nédélec, Blaise Parmentier, Alexandre Périgot, Hugo Pernet…

A series of shows around this theme will also be held at the Treize, a new venue encompassing curator associations in the former Vitrine on Rue Moret, and at Shanaynay, a new place for young artists on Rue des Amandiers.

Interventions in public places
Street Painting 2
Curated by Aude Launay, to be discovered on 22 September. Carrying on the experiment conducted during the first Biennale with Street Painting, Street Painting 2 proposes comparing reflection about the pictorial medium, often confined to the studio and limited to the canvas’s surface, with the “outside” world. The urban space becomes an exhibition space with passers-by and neighbourhood residents forming the public. For a day’s span, ten or so French and international artists will occupy the streets of Belleville to re-enact the revolutions that have punctuated the history of this art. With Erwan Ballan, Davide Balula, Martin Barré, Cécile Bart, Nikolas Gambaroff (to be confirmed), Wojciech Gilewicz, Tobias Madison, Aldric Mathieu, Guillaume Pellay and Elodie Seguin.

The Night of Tableaux Vivants II
Curated by Christian Bernard, Mamco director (Museum of modern and contemporary art in Geneva) and Jean-Max Colard. Night of 22 September. In different forms (performances, videos, photographs), a dozen “living pictures” will fill the streets of Belleville. In her videos, the artist Pauline Curnier Jardin unearths such figures as Bernadette Soubirou and Joan of Arc to offer them another life. This proposition is the second episode of a project presented at the Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse in 2011.

Nicolas Milhé, Untitled
Curated by Anne Langlois and Patrice Goasduff / 40mcube, Rennes A ready-made sculpture by the artist Nicolas Milhé, a prefabricated element used in particular for building separation walls between two territories, fast and without foundations, is being shown at Place of the Colonel Fabien near the Belleville metro station. This work, produced in Rennes in 2005, and acquired by the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), is re-contextualized at the junction between the Chinese, Arab, Jewish and Pakistani neighbourhoods in Belleville.

Vincent Lamouroux at the Buttes-Chaumont
Vincent Lamouroux transforms the landscape of the Buttes-Chaumont park by covering one of its clumps with a white substance, thus giving it a ghostly look inviting us to daydream. Thus metamorphosed, the chosen trees appear as if snow-covered, from summer’s end on. Mixing sham chalk, rye flour and sugar, the white layer gradually blurs with the wind and rain, and disappears in about two months.

The “rediscovery” of the statue of Jean-Jules Pendariès in front of the Maison des métallos – Thinking Work and Working Thought
Curated by Caroline Hancock. From 14 to 17 September. Charlotte Moth, an artist concerned with notions of architectural heritage, has been asked by Caroline Hancock to reflect upon the statue of Jean-Jules Pendariès, Le Répit du travailleur (Worker’s Rest), which, rumour has it, inspired Rodin’s famous Thinker.

Novel projects
Creation of an art lending library in the Centquatre
Opening on 26 September. This year the Belleville Biennale is broading its perimeter. An art lending library is being set up in the heart of the Centquatre with a loans system on the esplanade. This idea, brainchild of Gilles Baume, consists in re-thinking the transmission of works of art in a neighbourhood which does not have such habits, as well as promoting this practice in intra muros Paris. The designer Stéphane Barbier Bouvet has devised an attractive display and a siting of the works. The collection has been put together with the help of Belleville’s galleries with a possible view to the works on loan being purchased (works with a commercial value of less than 1,000 euros).

Le Grand Tour — occupation of artists’ studios
Answering a proposal by Claire Moulène, studios of artists like Camille Henrot, Philippe Quesne, Bernhard Rüdiger, Raphaël Siboni and Virginie Yassef are registered in the Biennale’s circuit, becoming the setting for specific works. With their modest and reactive formats, these temporary projects are the result of a game of invitations. In Olivier Dollinger’s studio, for example, the project Circles stories will stage and link a Marcel Duchamp roto-relief, the exhibition curator Mathilde Villeneuve, the art historian and critic Barnard Marcadé, and the eurhythmics champion, Ketty Martel. This project also enables us to discover, on 22 September, a novel installation by the artist Mathias Kiss in the AIR group’s studio.

And as ever…
The Biennale newspaper
As in the first Biennale, a newspaper is being published. Serving at once as a map of the venues and a schedule of goings-on, as well as a compilation of curators’ writings and interviews with artists, this is your indispensable guide, distributed all over Paris.

Exhibitions in Belleville’s galleries, to be visited during the Biennale
Belleville’s galleries are important visits to be made. Some of their artists are naturally associated in Biennale projects, like Alexandre Périgot, represented by the Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, in the show at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin; Jonathan Binet, represented by the Galerie Gaudel de Stampa, and Elodie Seguin, represented by the Galerie Jocelyn Wolff in Street Painting 2; Charlotte Moth, represented by the Galerie Marcelle Alix in Caroline Hancock’s project, and Nicolas Milhé represented by the Galerie Samy Abraham, presenting a sculpture in a public place.

Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
119-121 rue de Ménilmontant
Belleville neighborhood
Paris 75020 France (metro station Gambetta)
Tel. : + 33(0)1 58 53 55 40
www.labiennaledebelleville.fr

Admission free in all venues