Jean-Charles de Quillacq

Jean-Charles de Quillacq (France, 1979) develops sets of sculptures that are both organic and abstract, conceptual and fetishistic, which he presents by inviting others to take part in their exhibition protocols. He has produced several performances including Transport Amoureux at Triangle France in 2018 and Fraternité Passivité Bienvenue at the Palais de Tokyo in 2016.

His work has been the subject of several monographic exhibitions, including in 2021 at Art 3 Valence, in 2020 at the Marcelle Alix gallery which represents him, in Bétonsalon in 2019 and at La Galerie, a contemporary art centre in Noisy-le-Sec in 2018. He has recently exhibited at the Bemis Art Center (Omaha, USA), the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, the Matter of Art Biennale in Prague and the last Rennes Biennale. Jean-Charles de Quillacq graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and continued his artistic training at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where he was a resident in 2010 and 2011.

Through his sculptures, Jean-Charles de Quillacq questions the relationship to the body, whose penetrability and porosity he likens to our capitalist economies. For his project at the French Academy in Rome, he is interested in the Italian concept of morbidezza (softness). While the term “morbide” in French always tends to denote a malady of some sort, the Italian derivation of morbidezza in the 16th century evolves rather towards a positive appreciation of softness, at the same time as the representation of a new body, much younger and of an indistinct gender, appears. The softness of these reborn bodies is linked to the way we think about our relationship to the world, and Jean-Charles de Quillacq’s project aims to deploy all the positive potential of being soft, if we accept other logics than those validated by our capitalist systems.

 

Photo portrait © Daniele Molajoli
Video portrait © Laurent Perreau pour l’Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis