Panis
Olivier
Kosta-Théfaine
Born in 1972, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine, who describes himself as a “landscape painter”, explores the city from its margins. As he moves through urban space, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine searches for elements which escape us. In his desire to rehabilitate the uninteresting or the connotated, the artist puts the often inextricable and powerful relationship we have with the city back into the realm of poetry. His intere...st in detail guides his travels and feeds a bank of images. Considering himself a pure product of the city, he plays with clichés and transforms common references. Classicism is hijacked through the techniques of “cheap vandalism”, as when he composes on the three domes of the Palais de Tokyo a sky charred with a lighter, inspired by the frescoes of Italian palaces, the graffiti on the ceilings of his adolescence takes on the air of Renaissance paintings.
 
A self-taught artist and former Villa Medicis resident (2016-2017), his work has been exhibited, among others, at Domaine Vranken Pommery (2018 and 2021), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna – GNAM (2017), Palais de Tokyo (2016) Abbaye de Maubuisson (2012), Musée Cognacq-Jay (2011), Fondation Cartier (2009), and has joined the collections of the Fonds Départemental d’Art Contemporain of Essonne (2013) and the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain of the city of Paris (2011).

2024

Avant-propos, Rouen, France, Almost seul-tout (texte de Guillaume Lasserre)

2023

Römisches Haus, Weimar, Allemagne, Museum (commissariat : Marius Hoppe & Bauhaus Museum Weimar)

2022

Chapelle du Quartier Haut, Sète, France, Ciel noir, mer noire (production : Mécènes du Sud, texte : Julien Fronsacq)

2020

Hangar 107, Rouen, France, Cette sorte de sourire que sont parfois aussi les fleurs au milieu des herbes graves (une proposition de Nicolas Couturieux, texte de Guillaume Lasserre)

2019

Eva Hober, Paris, France, Une île (texte de Julien Fronsacq)

2018

La Chapelle des Dames Blanches, La Rochelle, France, Aria di Roma
Rabouan-Moussion, Paris, France, Aria di Roma (texte de Julien Fronsacq)

2017

Académie de France à Rome / Villa Medicis, Gipsoteca, Rome, Italie, Girovangando…

2016

Académie de France à Rome / Villa Medicis, Atelier del Bosco, Rome, Italie, Herbier (Notte Bianca)
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, Soffitto (commissariat : Hugo Vitrani)

2015

Mons 2015, Capitale Européenne de la Culture, Thuin, Belgique, Herbarium,
(Installation pérènne, commissariat : B.P.S.22,
production : Centre Culturel de Thuin Haute-Sambre)
Art Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Pays-Bas (avec Jeanrochdard)
Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Suède, Géographie

2014

Jeanrochdard, Bruxelles, Belgique, Like/Share
Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine / Samuel François (avec Jeanrochdard)

2013

Jeanrochdard, Paris, France, En Flânant…
Le Pilori, Niort, Panorama
Maison Patronale des usines Boinot, Niort, France, Jardin

A.L.I.C.E., Bruxelles, Belgique, Détails d’une rue

2012

Abbaye de Maubuisson – Grange aux Dimes, Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, France, Sculptures
Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Suède, Monde sauvage

2011

Jeanrochdard, Paris, France, Monde sauvage
Musée Cognaq-Jay, Paris, France, Jardin (Nuit Blanche)

2010

Cripta747, Turin, Italie, Monde sauvage

A.L.I.C.E., Bruxelles, Belgique, Monde sauvage

2009

Cripta747, Turin, Italie, W
Chapelle des Calvairiennes, Le Kiosque, Mayenne, France, Une petite histoire centrale

2007

A.L.I.C.E., Bruxelles, Belgique, Glitter

2005

Galerie Octave Cowbell, Metz, France, Burn baby burn!

2023

Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, La morsure des termites (commissariat : Hugo Vitrani)

2022

Laurent Strouk, Paris, France, Inti Punku (commissariat : Baptiste Ozenne)

2021

La Fab – Fonds de dotation Agnès.b, Paris, France, Graffiti et Agnès.b : 1985-2021 (commissariat : Agnes.b)

Domaine Vranken Pommery, Reims, France, Blooming (commissariat : Nathalie Vranken, Catherine Delot & Fabrice Bousteau)

Memento, Espace Départemental d’Art Contemporain, Auch, France, Mutations (commissariat : Karine Mathieu)

2020

Shivers Only lockdown venue, Chantemanche, France, Stay safe! (commissariat : Shivers Only)

2019

Material Art Fair, Mexico, Mexique (avec Chez Mohamed)

2018

Domaine Vranken Pommery, Reims, France, L’Esprit Souterrain (commissariat : Hugo Vitrani)

Ceysson-Bénétière, Paris, France, Scar/Face (commissariat : Hugo Vitrani)

2017

Académie de France à Rome / Villa Medicis, Rome, Italie, Aria di Roma in Swimming is saving (commissariat : Chiara Parisi)

Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, sede di Campo Boario, Rome, Italie, High Noon (commissariat : Adrienne Drake, Sarah Linford & Donatella Saroli)

Istituto Svizzero di Roma / Villa Maraini, Rome, Italie, Young Popes (commissariat : Latvian Institut Rome)

Ex-GAM, Bologne, Italie, Live Arts Week (commissariat : Xing)

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna – GNAM, Rome, Italie, Sensibile Comune
(commissariat : Ilaria Bussoni, Nicolas Martino & Cesare Pietroiusti)

2016

Palazzina dei Giardini, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, IT, Millenovecentottantaquattro (commissariat : Pietro Rivasi)

Rabouan-Moussion, Paris, Retiens la nuit (commissariat : Hugo Vitrani)

Galeria de Boavista, Lisbon, PT, Aujourd’hui je dis oui (commissariat : Aujourdhui.pt)

2015

Robert Blumenthal, NY, USA, Making an entrance (commissariat : Lvl3)

CO2, Torino, IT, Club of Matinée Idolz Bryce Wolkowitz, NY, USA, Dérive(s) (commissariat : Romain Dauriac)

2014

Jeanrochdard, Paris, To the happy few

LVL3, Chicago, USA, Rendering Emblems

Jeanrochdard, Paris, Ce qui arrêtait ces dames

2013

Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

M1886, Ankara, TR, Des maisons vides ne font pas une ville

2012

Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, LU

Jeanrochdard, Paris, Close Encounters

Domaine départemental de Chamarande, Salons – convivialité, écologie et vie pratique (commissariat : COAL)

Kulturhuset, Stockholm, SE, Street Smart – en tolerant samtidskonstutställning

Art Copenhagen, Copenhague, Danemark (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

2011

FIAC, Paris (avec le FMAC, Fond Municipal d’Art Contemporain de la ville de Paris, acquisitions 2011)

Galerie de l’Ecole nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy, ENSA, A new idea of landscape (commissariat : Samuel François)

Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

Jeanrochdard, Paris, Vertigo

2010

Room galleria, Milan, IT, Renato Leotta – Olivier Kosta-Théfaine – Samuel François

2009

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, Né dans la rue, Graffiti (commissariat : Thomas Delamarre)

Centre Culturel Tchèque, Paris

2008

MU, Eindhoven, NL, Fundamentals (commissariat : Jeroen Jongeleen)

Galerie de l’École superieure d’art de Metz, ESAM, Metz, Zero gravity

Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

2007

Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

2006

Art Brussels, Bruxelles, Belgique (avec A.L.I.C.E.)

2003

Palais des Pyrénées, Pau, Public images (commissariat : Festival Acces-s)

2002

De Appel, Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, NL, Unicura 2 (commissariat : Jeroen Jongeleen)

Les_33 / Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam, NL (commissariat : Jeroen Jongeleen)

2001

Povazska Galeria Umenia, Zilina, SK

2000

Galerie du Château de l’Etang, Saran

1999

Centre d’Art Contemporain, Rueil-Malmaison

1996

La Laiterie, Centre Européen de la Jeune Création, Strasbourg

2020 / 2022

Domaine Vranken Pommery, Reims, France

2017

Uppsala Kommun, Uppsala, Sweden

2013

FDAC, Fonds Départemental d’Art Contemporain de l’Essonne, Chamarande, France

2011

FMAC, Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain de la ville de Paris, Paris, France

2018-2021

ECHODESVAGUES, L’Île d’Yeu, France, Une Île

2016

Noire Gallery, Turin, Italy, Idéale Géographie

2015

Galerie Derouillon, Paris, France, Idéale Géographie
Le Moulin du Roc, Niort, France, Idéale Géographie

2018

Mécènes du Sud Montpellier-Sète, Montpellier, France

2016-2017

Académie de France à Rome / Villa Medicis, Rome, Italy

2012

Institut Français d’Ankara, Ankara, Turkey

2009

Cripta747, Turin, Italy
Chapelle des Calvairiennes / Le Kiosque, Mayenne, France

ALMOST SEUL-TOUT -  An exhibition by Olivier Kosta-ThéfaineALMOST SEUL-TOUT - An exhibition by Olivier Kosta-Théfaine14/03/2024 - 04/05/2024Avant-propos32, rue des Bons Enfants - 76000 Rouen
« Aria di Roma »Par Chiara Parisi
Air shapes artists' ideas. Everywhere different, it manifests itself as a warm wind, a breeze, an icy current, perceptible both physically and emotionally. We've even tried to capture its essence. Marcel Duchamp's paradox - almost a century ago - of collecting the air of Paris in a glass bulb remains among the most radical and symbolic expressions of the conceptual revolution in contemporary art. Air can coincide with the atmosphere - the temperature - of a place and, by extension, with the notion of genius loci. The strictly climatic or meteorological dimension influences the perception of a given territory and conditions the behavior, attitudes, actions and moods of those who live there. Capturing this correspondence between physical space and the spirit of a place is not given to everyone; genius loci is, by definition, elusive, and sometimes extra-ordinary. During his residency at Villa Medici, between 2016 and 2017, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine listened to the city of Rome, and traced its most intimate aspects. To the detriment of those who believe that only the eyes of the natives can capture the essence of a place, it is often the absence of familiarity that allows us to glimpse hidden details and those elements that habituation to a landscape most often prevents us from grasping. In this way, thanks to the artist's sensitivity, fragments of reality and atmosphere expand to take on unexpected forms. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine has made the most of this temporal habit with the city of Rome. What he has produced has been collected under the name Aria di Roma, a series of works that are profoundly heterogeneous from a formal point of view; as if the artist had acted under the impulse of another entity. In truth, his approach, and the attitude that binds the individual works together, are perfectly recognizable: the particular attention paid to marginal objects; their transformation towards an appearance and function different from the original; the urban landscape as a primordial source of inspiration. Notes on the bangs of explorations, fleeting annotations collected on walks and then shaped in the studio. For Olivier, Aria di Roma takes the poetic form of vases and containers covered in shells and characterized by a coloring close to Ercolano Blue, but charged with the reverberations of the Roman countryside. Aria di Roma is a "Made in China" reproduction of a Roman sky at sunset, or a pair of paintings suggesting the soft shadow of a quatrefoil stained-glass window. There's an IKEA shelf made from the wood of the Villa Medici's tall umbrella pines, and then there are material concretions from an imaginary building site, fragments... Olivier Kosta-Théfaine has reconstructed a portrait of the city that is at once ethereal, liquid and concrete. A poetic and somewhat ramshackle portrait, refreshed by the "Ponentino "1 blowing in from the outskirts - another strong inspiration for this series of works. Aria di Roma is a layered, contaminated work. And it couldn't be any other way: Rome, with its transversal, sometimes decadent landscape, is just as layered and contaminated. In eternal anticipation.
« To divide is to destroy »Par Julien de Fronsacq
Looking at the city in a different way, observing it in detail. That's the principle of my work, the things that others don't look at or neglect_ Olivier Kosta-Théfaine, 2015 Olivier Kosta-Théfaine claims a path on the margins. From this peripheral horizon, this decentering, he deduces the story of his apprenticeship and a singular body of work. Aria di Roma is the result of a recent twelve-month stay in Rome, a heritage city whose history is intimately linked to that of the museum. While many of his works refer to classical artistic conventions, some are subject to corruption, like the many acts of vandalism that the artist likes to stage. This could be seen as a hackneyed mannerism that proceeds through an iconoclastic juxtaposition of codes, social and cultural, high and low. It combines aristocratic landscape and wasteland, noble ornamentation and uncivilized stairwells. I'm thinking in particular of the French gardens composed of broken glass (Jardin, Cour d'honneur du Musée Cognacq-Jay, 2011) or the ceilings decorated with the flame of a lighter like those of the 1937 cupolas at the Palais de Tokyo (Soffitto, Palais de Tokyo, 2016). "On several occasions, I've created works that evoke plants. A few years ago, in Besançon, I tried to establish a cartography through flowers: I went to the outskirts of the city to pick wild flowers. The result was country bouquets named after the housing estates I'd visited: places that people don't go to because they're too far away or dangerous". Olivier Kosta-Théfaine From the herbarium to the museum, via cartography, the artist is interested in how forms are classified or downgraded, how they are torn from their context, and whether or not they achieve the status of precious fragments. In 2012, the artist designed a beautiful site-specific installation for Abbaye de Maubuisson in the form of an alignment of architectural columns, each different and orphaned from its original context. The arrangement of these elements in a line evoked both the authoritative vocabulary of minimal art and that of a museum's comparative gallery, in which one would observe a compilation of objects catalogued according to the same typology.
In fact, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine is far from confining himself to a collage of eclectic cultural forms, as he tests the mechanisms of selection of which the encyclopedic museum is the very theater. The vandalism and violence are not insignificant, and go far beyond the evocation of a social situation. From the outset, the museum's history has been divided between calls for safeguarding against revolutionary vandalism and the violent uprooting of an object from its context. Appointed a resident of the Villa Medici in 2016, he found Rome an ideal environment whose history is intimately linked to that of the European museum. The former graffiti artist turned surveyor of the contemporary urban environment owes a debt of gratitude to the pioneer of the discipline. Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849), the famous French archaeologist born in the midst of the antiquomania fostered by the discoveries of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748), was also the contemporary of the revolutionary creation of the Louvre Museum (1793). Having visited Italy and in particular its capital in 1776, twenty years later he opposed Napoleon's seizures and their repatriation to the Louvre, declaring "To divide is to destroy!
For Olivier Kosta-Théfaine, the cultural legitimacy that underpins a cultural asset also stems from a form of violence, that of a vertical organization that divides our symbolic representations, our imaginary. In 2013, the exhibition entitled En flânant at Galerie Jeanroch Dard brought together traces of peri-urban drift and museological instruments. Two years earlier, in the same gallery, Souvenirs des Indes, a work in the form of a showcase table made up of a series of mineral fragments found in an eponymous low-income housing estate (in reality concrete blocks, the remains of dynamited bars) evokes certain areas of our cities that we try to conceal, forbidden from representation.
A few years later, his exhibition at Villa Medici Aria di Roma opened with a large-scale installation entitled Dix petits monuments (2017), an ensemble of garden furniture - pots, planters, basins - in a single color covered with shells. We're reminded of the noble grotesque style of artificial caves, or the rustic style of naturalistic relief decorations. A keen walker and collector, the artist gathered these marine shells in the vicinity of Ostia. Ostia is a seaside town on the outskirts of Rome, and the namesake of an ancient city rich in harbour remains due to its privileged location along the coast at the mouth of the Tiber. Before Olivier Kosta-Théfaine, Robert Smithson (1938-1973) was interested in drifting on the outskirts of cities. He produced a well-known example in Passaic, an industrial town on the outskirts of New York, after which he wrote an article subtitled "Has Passaic replaced Rome as the Eternal City? Following in Quatremère's footsteps, Robert Smithson contributed, two centuries later, to debates on the museum. In Some Void Thoughts on Museum (1967), the museum, whose mission is to represent abstract time in physical space, finds itself torn between spatial and temporal dimensions. The museum, always lacunar, is punctuated by chronological gaps like so many epistemological voids. Like his predecessor, Robert Smithson spent time in Rome. The poster for his exhibition at the L'Attico gallery in 1969 - one year after his text on non-sites - depicts a truck at the top of a hill pouring out the contents of a skip full of tar. The young Smithson had previously conceived an exhibition at the George Lester Gallery (1961). Smithson links the overwhelming presence of tourism, the petrified fragment and mortifying classification, and employs the metaphor of petrifying, obscene entomology: "My paintings are displayed like the intimate parts of butterflies against walls of icicles. Small monuments whose title evokes both their modest cultural value and their plastic quality, popular gardens and their little DIY arrangements. With a decoration made of mortar covered in brightly colored industrial paint, the author, returning from a walk along the Roman coast, pays homage to the impoverished, kitsch forms that have proliferated in the age of widespread industrialization. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine, who refuses to be disenchanted, nevertheless responds with distance and lucidity to the mass tourism that debases the sublime experience of the city-museum. Struck by the contrast between the tourist souvenir trade and the power of the Roman sky, he commissioned a highly romantic painting of a Roman sky he had photographed in a Chinese town specializing in oil painting reproductions (Cielo (Dafen), 2017). The romantic sublime is now under attack from its technical capture, industrial exploitation and photogenic reproducibility. In the second room of his exhibition, a group of works in different styles. On the floor, a shelf and fragments; on the wall, the painting of the Roman sky, abstract works and a monochrome diptych, entitled Neuilly-Sarcelles (2017). Linked to the history of the Villa Médicis, the title takes up an acid description that the writer Hervé Guibert, a former resident, had made of it, in particular the organization of the estate between the historic part and the modern maisonnettes built in series at the back of the estate. The two monochromes are two canvases dyed with a decoction of umbrella pine bark and laurel flowers. The artist hoped for a chromatic result that would reveal the social divide common to the Villa and the Paris suburbs. Against all expectations, the tones turned out to be equivalent. The fragments are all scattered on the floor, but belong to different cultural registers: a piece of concrete, a piece of classical sculpture and a few shards of antique ceramics. In the center, a work of art takes up the standard dimensions of a famous Swedish shelving unit. It is a reproduction of a piece of furniture that stood in the Villa apartment attributed to the artist, contrasting with the decor of the famous director and painter Balthus. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine in turn proposes to furnish the Villa. To do this, he simply reproduced the furniture he had found using the wood of a tree felled in the park, a noble umbrella pine planted at the time when another former resident painter had become director, Ingres (1780-1867). In the manner of a heterogeneous geological concretion, the result is a work that challenges our system of cultural values: local and international, industrial and natural, manufactured and artisanal, noble and vulgar. This is because the artist takes a keen interest in seemingly uninteresting detail both outside and within his own workplace. During his stay, he began a series of spray-paintings on linen canvas left untouched. The series of paintings sketches out a singular, minimal filiation that has sought to free itself from the painting and the brush. The colors could evoke those of Charlotte Posenenske (1930 - 1985), the gesture that of Martin Barré (1924 - 1993), and the abandoned stretcher support that of Giorgio Griffa (1936). Untitled (Porta Portese) (2017), a meticulous survey of traces of spray paint found on walls in the mechanical and automotive section of the flea market, is a magnificent tribute to the anonymous traces of those who - on Sundays - at leisure, try to maintain their vehicles themselves. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine refers this history of painting to the almost invisible signs that adorn our cities, indicative of popular usage. At the same time, he recovers a "martyrdom" from a factory, a support bearing the paint marks of mechanical parts. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine's work is part of a history of painting that peaked in the 1960s and 70s, a period of growth and inflation, the golden age of immigration, which necessitated the rapid construction of multi-family housing. Beyond his own youth, the artist was attentive to this social history, and sought out its high points in Rome. The Corviale, sometimes called the "Kilometre Palace" (Palazzo Chilometro), is a 957-metre-long building in the south-west of the city. Of this monumental architecture, inspired by the Corbuséan "Radieuses", he presents a fragment of concrete with metal bars running through it. Displayed in this way, this piece of concrete from a large-scale collective housing project becomes the relic of a modern project, now in crisis, a relic presented on the same level as fragments of ancient and classical Rome. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine has thus created a conceptual system that enables him to link parts of history that the art museum is unable to embrace.
Drawing a singular chronology, he invents a new form of unexpected and eclectic monument that reconciles victories and defeats, great figures and the commonplace, linking noble and popular forms, forgotten objects and anonymous gestures.
« I'm a Sartrouvillois, baby ! »Par Olivier Kosta-Théfaine
West suburban. And have been since I was a kid. In 34 years, I've had time to observe my neighborhood, its codes and its changes. "Hey, where do you come from?" "I'm a Sartrouvillois, baby!" I'm not a Parisian, I'm a commuter, and I wear that label like you wear a particle. I'm a pure product of the suburbs. I was born in an exotic land on the outskirts of Paris, beyond the ring road. My merco is called Rer A, bus 272 or n° 9, take your pick. Between countryside and concrete, a change of scenery is guaranteed. I come from a country where diversity is king, like a Saturday afternoon at the Paris Châtelet station: "bling bling" and color, all the colors. There's nothing sad about the suburbs, the ghettos are named after flowers and on Saturday evenings, cars are burned in the style of a block party. To observe the suburbs is to be sensitive to the broken glass of the bus shelters that litter the asphalt like thousands of sharp little diamonds, while the barbed wire that protects the Post Office warehouse is transformed into hundreds of stars that sparkle in the neon lights of the surrounding lampposts. Undoubtedly, the suburbs are poetry, art brut. "Fuck", "suck" and "motherfucker" in marker on walls and bus seats. As for fantasy, it's in the "looks": the new generation have mixed the English working-class style with the French suburban style: Beckham-style haircuts, Italian jeans and retro sneakers, the "style" is also on the inked arms of the older generation, oldschool tattoos executed with needles and Indian ink, and sports socks under flannel pants. I come from a place where guys hang out in the halls. Decoration workshops are organized in the stairwells: the flame of a lighter is used to express oneself in verses on the ceilings or to customize the containers in the garbage room, to be seen. My town is an invitation to dream: it's a "first prize" town, with three stars for flowers, and the big city on the corner is called "Les Indes", not exactly a vacation postcard: no maharajahs or palaces from the Arabian Nights... A horse-riding arena has been set up not far from the old farm, near the railway line. But for the ultimate rodeo, a paving stone in a tile and the ability to do wiring will do the trick. My building is my pride and joy, and I'm a true supporter of my "Villa Daumier": concrete is my life, and even if my relationship with it is ambiguous, I love it, I claim it and I defend it. My tower is also a Nike Town: impeccable for every occasion, from head to toe, sportswear on every floor, the logo and swoosh. The Plateau's huge shopping mall sells cheap dreams: a stroll there doesn't cost a dime, and gives you the illusion of escaping the everyday. The ultimate show: see what you want, a daydream that doesn't ruin your life. What's more, the allotments set up at the foot of the buildings allow you to spend long, sunny, bucolic Sundays in the countryside. There's nothing sad about the suburbs, just a bunch of clichés, and perhaps a real sense of abandonment for those who live on the other side of the ring road."
« Cette sorte de sourire que sont parfois aussi les fleurs au milieu des herbes graves »Par Guillaume Lasserre
"The kind of smile that flowers sometimes have in the midst of severe weeds.". The title, borrowed from the Swiss author Philippe Jaccottet, is as poetic as it is enigmatic. Behind it lies the first retrospective exhibition of Olivier Kosta-Théfaine's work. For the Hangar 107 art center in Rouen, the artist has brought together a representative group of original or reinterpreted pieces that have marked his career to date, while taking care to show some new ones. While this is the first retrospective look at twenty-five years of a singular plastic production, it also offers an opportunity to embrace a body of work so far presented in a scattered fashion. And it's right at the entrance to the art center, in the antechamber that separates the exhibition space from the outside world, that he intervenes by obsessively and randomly applying the flame of a lighter to the entire surface of the ceiling. The ceiling is then covered with abstract motifs, creating a visual symphony. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine's background is in graffiti, an art form that, like him, originated in the suburbs. He is a kind of artistic class defector. Moving from the street to the gallery, he uses popular language as a tool, and applies the codes of vandalism, all too often associated with the idleness of suburban youth, to his art. As early as 2005, he began creating ceilings burned with lighters, in the style of "those who squat in stairwells". However, the result is seen from an artistic point of view. It is validated, admired, by the very people who denounce it as a method of degradation when it takes place in suburban buildings. "Souvenirs des Indes" (2011), a showcase work in which urbanism and exoticism collide, confirms this. Presented as precious objects, the pieces of concrete actually come from the rubble of a low-income housing block, la Cité des Indes, dynamited in 2010. By making them inaccessible, they make them sacred, arousing the visitor's curiosity and confronting him with a reality that is not his own, that of the relegation of peripheral areas. A native of Sartrouville, the artist expresses the ambiguous relationship he has with his city, between attraction and aversion, in "Supporters" (2005), eleven supporters' scarves bearing the names and colors of the Plateau housing estates in Sartrouville. Les Indes, Le Théâtre... Supporting your city at all costs, defending it to the bitter end, like the ultra who supports his soccer team, which, whatever happens, will always wear its colors proudly. With them, we enter the Hangar 107 venue. Next door is the immense poetry of "Paysages de banlieue", a series of large-format works on paper showing not trees, but the memory of trees, in this case chestnut trees, reminiscent of the artist's adolescence through what he saw from the living-room window. By erasing any other urban presence (parking lots, railway tracks...), he invents a bucolic, peaceful suburb, where only the sepia color and the cracks in the paper - each tree is drawn with the flame of a lighter - bear witness to the hardships of a suburban life. This resurgence of adolescence is again evident in "Sans Titre (Villa Daumier)", where the artist recreates the striped wallpaper that covered the walls of his bedroom at the time. Nine gray strokes are required for one stroke of color. The latter corresponds to the primary colors: blue, green, red, yellow. Endlessly, the stripes are repeated in this precise order. Opposite it, "Untitled (jardinières)" (2020) offers visitors to the exhibition only concrete planters as benches, the same as those ubiquitous in the suburbs, where weeds and debris have long since replaced even the smallest flower. These planters are often used as meeting places, to drink a beer or smoke a joint. Here, they lead us to the back wall, punctuated by frames containing "L'esprit souterrain, se poser parmi les fleurs" (2018-2020). This carpet, or rather fragments of it, whose floral motifs are borrowed from the design of the folding seats of the suburban train A  in Paris, the same line that serves Sartrouville, was originally installed in the cellars of Domaine Pommery, which commissioned it. Condemned to disappear because of the conditions in which it was displayed - too low a temperature, too high a humidity level, the constant passage of visitors - it can now be seen in an aged, stained and soiled version, the memory of a year in the cellars of the famous Champagne vineyard. The similarity of this degraded state evokes buried memories of the last suburban train. The one you take to get home is in a hostile environment. Getting around the obstacles seems to be the daily lot of the nocturnal commuter. Acts of vandalism are commonplace. Ironically, the remnants of the carpet damaged by curious champagne-lovers are exactly the same as the one vandalized on the suburban train. Appearances are deceptive. Olivier Kosta-Théfaine likes to use them to instill a sense of disquiet. Don't worry, though: framed and hung on the wall, the relics become works of art. On the opposite wall, you can see the evanescent trace left by the black smoke, the remains of a rubbish fire, the delicate stigma of a violent, connotative act. Destruction gives rise to a form of fragility, the elegance of the infinite nuance of a gradation invented in the black of smoke. The exhibition closes with a series of postcards dedicated to Sartrouville, each more incongruous than the last, given the absence of any tourist attractions. The suburbs stretch indiscriminately for miles. Its power of attraction seems limited, non-existent if you compare it to the disproportionate power of the city it surrounds. It's the eternal fringe, the very fringe on which the artist proposes to take another look, as with these postcards imagined with great humor and love for the city that saw him grow up. They bear witness to Olivier Kosta-Théfaine's constant concern to bring the periphery back to the center.
InterviewMemento, espace départemental d'art contemporain, Auch (Gers, France), 2021
Mutations, TeaserMemento, espace départemental d'art contemporain, Auch (Gers, France), 2021