Armel Beaufils, le Regard des femmes

The FRAC Bretagne and the commune of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer invited me to curate an exhibition based on their significant collection of works by the sculptor Armel Beaufils (1882-1952), preceded by a solo exhibition to introduce the concept through my research on forms of ‘the model’ and the forming or control of bodies. While the works show the formal academic training of Armel Beaufils, following the conventions of realism, symbolism, and idealism, working from the model or from photographs, they demonstrate care and affection for their subjects, as well as an attachment to place. The question that confronted me was how to place it in a contemporary context, in which it would be dynamic, operating in the present, and accessible to a largely non-art public. To this end, the plaster casts or moulages of women/girls were taken out of storage, from individual displays and archives. These are models for works to be realised in more enduring form, in marble, stone, bronze. The models exist and are yet-to-be. They are still mutable forms. Assembled, these feminine forms, gestures, and attitudes were presented on plinths painted in pastel pink, greeting and confronting the visitors to each gallery space. In response to the works, a corresponding number of women artists produced texts, images, diagrams. Each figure of a woman was the partner of another woman, looking at the past through and in the present. The resulting correspondence, in whatever form –like a letter or a conversation between women (to which is added the viewer who enters), an exchange of observation – was produced as cartels mounted on the wall, simultaneously forming a guide to the work/s of Beaufils and a commentary thereon (at times a critique). The exhibition was accompanied by a publication, in which the contemporary works was foregrounded, reversing the encounter in the exhibition.