C215: La Mauvaise réputation

C215 fights for art to be free: free to be purely aesthetic and entertaining, and free to condemn. La Mauvaise réputation first refers to his own bad reputation, since the good people do not like others’ freedom [reference to the song of the same name by the singer Georges Brassens]. But La Mauvaise réputation is also a paradigm... and a pretext to present a both startling and controversial gallery of portraits.

The exhibition therefore starts with Ted, this living teddy bear which is nothing but cute (Ted is the main character of the american movie of the same name, dated 2012). This ironic reference to his cat stencils introduces to the topic of the show. How comes that bad guys are always the most famous fictional characters? How can we explain our fascination with evil and its icons? The exhibition presents about fifty portraits of French and international political figures, personalities from modern and contemporary history, medias, culture, etc. As for his his past exhibition Douce France, visitors will have to pay attention to the relationship between the subject matter and the chosen medium, as it will be a key to understand the works without however limiting their reading. La Mauvaise réputation reflects our time: it is full of political uncertainty and various concerns. This exhibition aims at raising questions about our society, its symbols and icons, and retros- pectively, about ourselves.