“My hands are frozen!”, “I've fallen into a hole again!”, “This isn't the right path”.
“My hands are frozen!”, “I've fallen into a hole again!”, “This isn't the right path”. At times the valley muffled the grunts; at other moments it gave them a powerful echo. At 2,500 metres above sea level, in the Mercantour mountains, the crossing of the Trécolpas towards the Cougourde refuge proved far more arduous than we had imagined. First, because entry-level snowshoes on a slope don't work. They keep slipping off, you lose your balance, you fall on your side, and then good luck getting back up. […] Exhibition view, AZIMUTH, © photographic credits François Fernandez, Benoît Barbagli. Galerie Eva Vautier and the artists Benoît Barbagli, Tom Barbagli, Evan Bourgeau, Camille Franch-Guerra, Omar Rodriguez Sanmartin, Florent Testa and Anne-Laure Wuillai, together with the curator Frédéric Blancart*, and an energetic scenography proposed by Célia Vanhoutte, present the exhibition Azimuth. Originally meaning path or direction, the term “azimuth” designates, in topography, the horizontal angle set from the direction of north towards that of a point on the horizon. Between daily peri-urban crossings, desires for wild escapades and artistic protocols, the exhibition Azimuth begins with a collective approach. Close to a performative process, the eight friends gather for an inaugural excursion towards Mont Cima, starting from each person's own doorstep. The walk, or the route through streets, lanes and tracks, then paths, reaches the highest and most distant point that eight bodies in agreement can attain, nine days before the winter solstice. On a second ascent, the curator Frédéric Blancart joins the artists, and together they withdraw to a high-mountain refuge, after a tumultuous journey through snowy peaks, scree and a frozen lake. Above 2,000 metres, the snow, like an imprint of each person, becomes an ephemeral sculpture: hollows or mounds, lines incised or in relief, trails running in different and converging directions along one and the same azimuth. Far from being limited to these two expeditions, the approach endures and heralds other explorations and quests for new lands, territories and seas. If walking is a pretext for gathering, each person conceives it in their own way, revealing each individuality as interdependent with the others. Some perform, collect and archive; others care for, cultivate and assemble. The walks undertaken for the exhibition, like escapes freeing one from common constraints, reveal as a kind of primacy buried animalities and fantasies, at times lyrical flights in a body-to-body with nature. Sketching the contours of a traversed territory, the exhibition calls for a wandering stroll through installations, sculptures, drawings, photographs and videos. The works trace the multiplicity of routes: steep paths or tarmacked roads, rock climbs or sea dives, introspective or collective journeys. Celia Vanhoutte, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, accompanies the artists from the first walks through to the…
