Juan Fernando Herrán: La Pierre et la Poussière (Stone and Dust)

Juan Fernando Herrán: La Pierre et la Poussière (Stone and Dust)
Opening: Friday, September 15, 7pm
September 16–November 26, 2017

Curator: Marc Bembekoff, Director of Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers

As part of the France-Colombia 2017 program, the two French contemporary art centers of La Villa du Parc and La Halle des Bouchers are pleased to host the first solo shows in France of two major artists from Colombia’s art scene, Danilo Dueñas in Annemasse and Juan Fernando Herrán in Vienne.

For his first major solo exhibition in Europe, Juan Fernando Herrán (b. 1963, lives and works in Bogotá) proposes at Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers a site-specific project based on the age-old sedimentation of the city of Vienne.

If materials and archeological objects’ study is the key to allow him to interpret the past, it also reveals and testifies the way present is grounded in History. Juan Fernando Herrán’s works address issues that acknowledge a crossing of cultural backgrounds with societal subjects not always visible at first sight. For his Vienne project, the artist got interested in tracing out and questioning the archeological and patrimonial material of the city, and the way sedimentation has shaped its history. While investigating on the now abandoned former Abbey of Saint-André-le-Haut, built on an ancient Roman site, used at some time as a cemetery, then confiscated at the French Revolution to be later transformed into a housing facility (that lasted until the late 1990s), Juan Fernando Herrán reveals history cycles and our constant re-use of past elements. Such perpetual shifting is a way for him to explore the notions of hidden memory, inherent violence and sovereignty rooted in ideological and social changes along history. This research has enriched an installation project—including sculpture, video and photography—which inhabits the contemporary art center’s space.

Juan Fernando Herrán has exhibited in a various museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston; Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. He has also participated in international events such as the Biennales of Venice, Liverpool, Habana, and São Paulo. He has received important awards including the Prix Pictet Commission, Switzerland, 2014; Festival Off Award, FotoEspaña, Madrid, 2007; and the 11th Beca Nacional de Creación, Ministry of Culture, Bogotá, 2000.

Juan Fernando Herrán recently had monographic exhibitions in different places such as Museo Amparo (Puebla, Mexico, 2017), National University of Colombia Art Museum (Bogotá, 2016), Nueveochenta Contemporary Art (Bogotá, 2016), MAMM (Museum of modern art in Medellín, 2016), Ideobox (Miami, 2014), or NC-arte (Bogotá 2011).