One More Reality is the first stage of the project Milano/Marsiglia born from the dialogue between two contemporary art organizations – Careof and Documents d’artistes: these are two realities, one Italian and the other French, that serve as key references for their respective city’s artistic system, deeply rooted in their local contexts and committed to promoting and documenting contemporary artistic creation through various tools, foremost among them the archive. The two associations also share the fact that they are housed in important examples of industrial archaeology dedicated to artistic and cultural production: La Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan and La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille.

The Milano/Marsiglia project, born from an idea by independent curator Katia Anguelova, moves along two parallel tracks: on one hand, it is a reflection on the tool of the archive; on the other, it opens a window onto the artistic scene of the two countries through the practices of French and Italian artists, video screenings, and meetings with artists and professionals from the respective organizations.

The events are organized in two stages: from January 19 to February 25, Documents d’artistes is in Milan at Careof and Le Centre culturel français de Milan; from March 4 to April 2, Careof presents at La Friche La Belle de Mai a group show of Italian artists and a special project by Dafne Boggeri for the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

One More Reality, curated by Guillaume Mansart, presents works by 14 French artists active in southern France. Alongside these are artist portfolios, editions, publications, and books available for consultation to deepen understanding of the authors featured in the exhibition and the Marseille archive.

On Tuesday, February 9, the exhibition hosts artists Jean Baptiste Ganne and Cédric Teisseire, members of the collective La Station, which has animated the artistic scene of the city of Nice for twenty years, managing an exhibition space, a residency, and a research space.

On Wednesday, February 24, at Le Centre culturel français de Milan, artists Denis Brun, Till Roeskens, and Jean-Claude Ruggirello will meet the public and present their videos.

The title of the first stage of the project One More Reality takes inspiration from the work by Philippe Parreno, No more reality (1991): in the video, a group of children marches through the streets of Nice, shouting “no more reality.” Twenty years after that demonstration, the questioning of reality still seems highly relevant. If no one today demands the overthrow of the real – notes the curator – it is perhaps because the course of things seems to be heading in that direction already, allowing the coexistence of two worlds, reality and the imaginary. One more reality: the necessity to bring close parallel universes, the millefeuille of possibilities, the voluntary and playful intrusion of storytelling into everyday life, the continuous escape from reality. Adding realities, multiplying layers means questioning the existence of a single truth. A narrative for the world, a world for the narrative, for the creation of universes that amplify or distort the rules of our daily lives.

History adds to history as in the work of Julien Tiberi. Anthony Duchène uses scientific language to create works that are part of a subjective experience. In Frédéric Clavère, protagonists come from literature and horror cinema, just as in Marie-Eve Mestre, where characters interact with “our childhood friends.” Marc Etienne refers to the Valle del Perturbante as a place where a once-cohesive reality liquefies, threatened by the knives of Sylvie Reno. The dreams of Marion Mahu respond to the strangeness of Lina Jabbour’s drawings and collide with the photographs of Olivier Bedu. While André Merian focuses on the media’s gaze on our society, Alexandre Gérard delights in finding, in insignificant details of everyday objects and images, provocative and paranoid meta-narrative cues. Gerald Panighi creates micro-narratives between drawings and brief phrases. Emmanuel Regent plays discreetly, almost imperceptibly modifying everyday objects, while Laurent Perbos reorganizes them to create imposing sculptures. The presented artists, almost like demonstrators – responding to Parreno’s 1991 “demonstration” – strongly affirm the necessity of personalized narrative structures. They seem to claim that this world is no longer enough and that there is a need for more and more and more…

With the support of Fondazione Cariplo, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Marsiglia, and Baboo