Fanny
Gicquel

in summary
NEW . 16.01.2025

Critical
texts

Haunt

Text of the exhibition Haunt, Hua international, Berlin, 1 march - 6 april 2024, by Jesi Khadivi
Hua International is pleased to announce Haunt, Fanny Gicquel’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. «Haunting,” the cultural theorist Mark Fisher writes, “happens when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time.” In her first exhibition without live performers, Gicquel translates the sensation of haunting into shifting layers of presence that inhabit constellations of ambiguous objects and sculptural …

breathing with heels, walking with eyes

Text by Michael Hill
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, 2023
Fanny Gicquel’s tactile and adaptive sculptural environments refer to intimate and natural forms. Their components are dependent on one another, providing resting points where groups of objects and materials harmonise and perform. The serpentine aluminium stripes that delineate the gallery floor share likenesses with the curvature of a body in repose or an undulating shoreline. This alignment between discreet bodily outlines and formations in nature allows Gicquel to explore …

Les lézards au Frac Bretagne

Les finalistes du Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac 2022, Pierre Ruault
Du 14 octobre 2022 au 15 janvier 2023
« De tous les lieux occupés, le seul immatériel, assignable nulle part, mais qui, j’en suis certaine, les contient tous d’une façon ou d’une autre », Annie Ernaux, Le vrai lieu. Entretien avec Michelle Porte, Paris : Ed. Gallimard, coll. folio, 2022, p. 12. Les lézards est une exposition qui présente les productions des quatre finalistes de la deuxième édition du Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac : Clémence Estève, Fanny Gicquel, Valérian Goalec et Reda Roussela. Malgré …

Les Lézards

Text by Éléna Cardin, prix du Frac Bretagne, 2022
The exhibition, which brings together the four artists nominated for the Frac Bretagne Prize, doesn’t follow a thematic approach but instead aims to highlight postures, temperaments, and perspectives on the world that call for particular modes of attention. Like lizards that suddenly emerge only to disappear just as quickly, the artists gathered here are drawn to transitional states, to moments of shifting from one perspective to another, to the body in its impermanence and …

Près de la cataracte

Henri Guette, texte à propos de l’exposition Près de la cataracte, ARCO, Madrid, février 2022
Texte publié sur YACI/Jeune critique d’art (2022)
On a toujours une impression de fragilité avec le verre. Peut-être parce que c’est la matérialisation d’un souffle et que l’on sait tout ce qu’un souffle a de cassant. Une respiration figée dont les contours seraient des mots, dont les bris gardent toujours un air de menace. Avec le verre, on fait des jolies choses comme des petits animaux, des ménageries qui prennent la poussière sur les étagères quand on ne sait pas les aimer. Avec le verre, on se coule dans la respiration …

Questionner notre rapport à l’espace, au temps et aux choses

par Silvana Annicchiarico
Publié dans Domus Magasine. Rubrique Talents -Numéro 1072 (2022)
Fanny Gicquel crée des environnements, pas des objets. Elle invente des mondes, des lieux artificiels où le corps peut expérimenter un autre espace et un autre temps. Entre les arts de la scène et le design émotionnel et communicatif, Fanny Gicquel imagine des univers non pas comme des lieux habités de manière statique par des entités-objets bien définies et cloisonnées, mais comme des espaces d’osmose et d’échange : des constellations dynamiques de combinaisons, …

L'âme de fond

Anne-Lou Vicente
Text of the exhibition « Des éclats », As part of Les Chantiers Résidence, Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest et Documents d'artistes Bretagne, 2020
Groundswell“In its simple, natural, primitive form, far from any aesthetic ambition and any metaphysics, poetry is a joy of the breath, the obvious happiness of breathing. The poetic breath, before being a metaphor, is a reality that one could find in the life of the poem if one wanted to follow the lessons of the aerial material imagination. “(1)Romanticism has made a common place out of the landscape-state of mind, subject respectively to the variability of elements and …

Associations and projects

Over the past few years, I’ve co-created several projects. Brought together by shared values, they all promote exchange, solidarity and community, in order to give artists space: space to express their relationship with their work, and space to produce and exhibit it. In co-creation, I set up a venue, created a residency, organized events and curated several exhibitions. This time spent “behind the scenes” and working with other people has taught me a lot about my relationship with others and how I want to evolve in the contemporary art ecosystem.
I’m also involved in the Board of Directors of the Finis Terrae association as secretary, and in that of the Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne as a qualified member.

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B612 2022- 2024

Co-founder and co-manager with Anouk Chardot, Vincent-Michaël Vallet, Dounia Ismail, Malo Le Grand, Maxime Bouchéras of the B612 association.

The aim of our association is to support the installation of individual artists’ studios, shared studios accessible to all, and exhibition spaces.quarterly events are organized to promote contemporary creation in all its forms, whether through studio openings to the public, artistic and craft initiations, or exhibitions.The B612 project supports artists and researchers seeking workspaces, as well as curators who program exhibitions that promote local, national and international contemporary creation. Collective life is at the heart of this project, through shared time and the organization of specific events. We also have a residency program in which we invite artists to develop an “in situ” intervention. As such, the artists invited in 2023 have invested the collective spaces they wish at 69 rue de la Motte Brûlon, taking into account the ephemeral nature of their intervention and the existence of the site.

COMICO

Co-founder with Matthis Berchery, Angèle Manuali, Anouk Chardot and Vincent-Michaël Vallet

COMICO is a collective organization that conceives of art research as a space for encounter, sharing and collaboration. The association presents itself as an ephemeral and inclusive retreat, where art and life intertwine through a varied program of activities.

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Transitoire 2019 - 2021

Co-founder with Anouk Chardot

Transitoire is an association that designs and promotes curatorial projects exploring the concept of the transitory, in both its conceptual and aesthetic dimensions.

Ateliers - Workshops

For several years now, I’ve been a regular participant in workshops for a wide range of audiences. Exchange and sharing are at the heart of my practice, and these encounters are particularly nourishing. Driven by these interactions, as well as by the inspiration of these experiences and my relationship with performers, I’m starting a new project bringing together performative objects and physical exercises to explore the relationship between the body and sculpture, and the passage from the individual to the collective.

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Parent-child experience workshop at FRAC Bretagne (2022-2023)
AJD workshop with young adults in rehabilitation with Alice Delanghe and Boris Regnier (Finis Terrae, 2022)
Workshop (EESAB Lorient, 2022)
Collaborative project with an Ulis class (Program Orange Rouge, Paris, 2024)
Workshop (EESAB Brest, 2022)
Mediation around my practice (B612)
School workshop (Ecole Liberté, 2019-2020, Rennes)

Résidences

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Les Chantiers Résidence, Brest, Novembre 2019- Février 2020
During this residency, I worked on the relationship between Fernando Pessao’s text Ode maritime and the lagage sémaphorique. This residency was supported by Documents d’artistes Bretagne and the team at Centre d’art Contemporain Passerelle in Brest. To find out more, read the residency diary: https://www.leschantiers-residence.com/fanny-gicquel/
Résidence Hotel Experimenta, Septembre 2020
Éléonore Berrubé, Philippe Roux and Ema Alkala are the founders of Hôtel Experimenta. For a week, with all the residents, we live in this hotel, work and exchange around our practices. The image is a sketch by Aurélie Gallois.
Résidence «  Tempête », Février-Mars 2021
Invited by Marcel Dinahet and Ann Stouvenel, I was welcomed for an artistic and social residency in partnership with the AJD association, located in Aber Wrach and on the island of Stagadon. We were supported by a grant from DRAC Bretagne and the Conseil régional de Bretagne, as part of the “Culture Solidaire” program of the Conseil départemental du Finistère. Thanks to this grant, I was able to invite Alice Delanghe to join me for this residency. We ran workshops with AJD members and invited other collaborators, such as Boris Regnier for a foundry workshop. We also curated video works, which were shown on site and at Poush Manifesto in Paris. Finally, we lived on the island of Stagadon for two weeks, during which time we created a triptych video work that was shown in several locations.
Résidence «  coup de pouce » à Le Bel ordinaire, Février 2022
During this residency, I created works on paper, exploring various techniques such as silkscreen and ink. The technical team was a great help in producing the silkscreens.
Résidence à Fieldwork Marfa, Juillet-Aout 2022
During the Hostcall exhibition-prize in Nantes, in which I participated in 2021, I won the Marfa prize, which enabled me to spend six weeks in Marfa (Texas, USA) in partnership with the Fieldwork Marfa program. During my residency, I devoted a lot of time to research. Every day, I made a short video, but this project has not yet found its final form. Maybe one day. We traveled and met some wonderful people during this residency.
Résidence Les Archives de la critique d’art, Janvier 2023-Janvier 2024
Invited by Antje Kramer and Sylvie Mokhtari for this residency, I worked collaboratively, in turn inviting researchers and artists specializing in the notion of the archive to select documents based on their own research and affects. Together, we built up a database that enabled me to create works on paper and sculptures. I received regional support for young visual artists in Brittany. This project was exhibited in Berlin with the support of Hua International Gallery and the Institut Français de Berlin. In the photos, you can see some of the invited guests, such as Henri Guette, Camille Paulhan and Philippe Artière.
Résidence Les Archives de la critique d’art, Janvier 2023-Janvier 2024
Invited by Antje Kramer and Sylvie Mokhtari for this residency, I worked collaboratively, in turn inviting researchers and artists specializing in the notion of the archive to select documents based on their own research and affects. Together, we built up a database that enabled me to create works on paper and sculptures. I received regional support for young visual artists in Brittany. This project was exhibited in Berlin with the support of Hua International Gallery and the Institut Français de Berlin. In the photos, you can see some of the invited guests, such as Henri Guette, Camille Paulhan and Philippe Artière.
Résidence « Orange Rouge », Mars-Juin 2024
Invited by Alexandra Goullier-L’Homme and Corinne Digart, I worked for several weeks with students from a ULIS class, mostly affected by the autism spectrum, as well as their teacher and auxiliary at collège Georges Courteline (Paris 12e). Working together around the curator’s theme of “The body, movement”, we created a collaborative work, both sculptural and performative.

Publication

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Sculpture with scenario

This publication, entitled “sculpture with scenario”, was produced in collaboration with graphic designers Marion L’Helguen and Zoé Lecossois. Published in 80 copies, it features images of my work, studio photos and images from my research binders. The text was written by Jesi Khadivi.