« Switchers: the Air Biennale », Paris

From March 27th to May 14th 2017, a creative and artistic residency was held in Nike’s hub in Paris. This exhibition unveils the product of the conceptual and aesthetic collaboration between the artists.

To understand the aims and aspirations of this project, it’s important to explain its context. After being a sleeping beauty for the past few decades, Paris is becoming again a major hub for contemporary art in the world.

New artist–run and project spaces are opening every day, fulfilling the lack of institutional support. Moreover, for the first time in a while, a new generation of French artists is acceding to international recognition and showing in the most important museums in the world. With this project, Nike intends to accompany this new era and support emerging artists in the most innovative way. If its long love story with Art is well known, this exhibition inaugurates a new way for the brand to work alongside artists: it assists them in the development of their career and offers them both financial and infrastructural support.
Sans titre (2016) was asked to conceive and chaperon this initiative.

The first step of this project was the residency. During more than a month, starting on the Air Max Day – March 26th – the German artist Robert Brambora, solicited by Sans titre (2016) took over an ephemeral studio installed in Nike’s hub in Paris.
Robert was born in 1984 in Halle, he is a painter but also a ceramist and he is interested in all kind of craftsmanships. He is also a curator, co–founder of the artist–run space Real Positive in Cologne, Germany. In the frame of his curatorial practice, he invited six artists from all over Europe whom he has conceptual and aesthetic acquaintances with to move into the studio with him. Throughout the entire residency, they succeeded one another by his side to exchange and work in this unprecedented creative hub. Among them are Antoine Donzeaud, Marcel Hiller, Agata Ingarden, Rahel Pötsch, Alexandre Silberstein and Maarten van Roy.

The product of this intellectual and aesthetic collaboration is shown during this exhibition. The artists installed themselves their work, playing with the volumes of this rare Parisian example of industrial architecture.
The month of May marked by its intense artistic actuality with the inauguration of the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel. Aware of this timing, Robert Brambora and the invited artists conceived this exhibition conversely to the institutional vibe which usually characterize this type of event. Each of them is exhibiting his own pavilion, sometimes made of a garden shed, a TV room or a flamboyant sports car.

Besides the human aim of this project – which is to grow together a creative community in this cultural hub – the residency also has a conceptual and aesthetic guideline: the notion of AIR.