Celebration :

« Art forms can have no other origin than celebration* » according to the writer and art historian Georges Bataille. The work of artist Tony Regazzoni echoes this maxim. He deals with current and past nocturnal rituals: nightclubs, funfairs, the solstice dances and even megalithic monuments.

In one of his first monographic exhibitions, The Cave, the artist highlighted how humans play with truth, hide behind simulacra, confuse darkness with light, take stones for magical elements and fetishize sculptures.

At the Palais Ducal of Nevers, he plunges us into this celebratory world and its contemporary representations. The celebration, or party, is a transgressive moment when everything becomes possible all while being aligned with tradition and the celebration of concrete events, whether political, religious, or personal. In ancient Greece the Dionysian rites were the embodiment of this tradition and gave permission for culinary and alcohol or sex oriented excesses. These festivities were carried out to honour Dyonisos, God of wine and theatre, and firmly link art to drunkenness, trance, etc. The works of Tony Regazzoni serve as metaphors of these closely shared roots by associating symbols from pagan ceremonies (the eclipse, dolmens…) to imagery and materials currently used for dramatization (lighting systems, patterns, music, etc).

Two pieces were produced for the exhibition : Deca/Dance (with the support of the DRAC Ile de France), a video clip where shifting bodies in a reconstructed club space are sculpted by lighting effects and confronted with elementary geometrical structures which form the architecture of the space, and Corny, a series of mural sculptures mixing natural and artificial elements and symbols.

You can bear witness to these two works in the Palais Ducal in a setting which has been specifically designed for the space. Tony Regazzoni was not invited by chance to this charged historic venue. The Palais Ducal also links past to present here in the city of Nevers, as it was once the dwelling of the dukes and has now become the dedicated space for all the city hall’s official ceremonies.

Visitors will thus be able to wander through the Fernand Chalandre room plunged into a decor of a strange suspended party. By using the themes of contemporary celebration, whether from funfairs or clubbing (dark atmosphere, an exhibition set-up inspired by theme parks…), Tony Regazzoni crystallises a living practice in different forms; sculpture, film, installation, thus making us think about our own celebratory practices.