Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux

The first room is a reference to a book published by the artist in 2023: LCDB, Le Culte des Banni.e.s (The Cult of the Banished). This text is a collection of reflections about artists co-opted by others who come from a different field, and about forms of expressionthat traverse categories of art. From this book, a series of live performances were created, extending the artist’s meditation on art and its margins. This performance aspect is essential in Labelle-Rojoux’s work. More so than first-person performances, he prefers what he calls “composite pieces”, juxtaposing references and connections from past and present: a collage of elective affinities. This room, bringing together musicians, filmmakers, writers and artists, all eminent members of the occult fellowship of “the Banished”, is a temple dedicated to the fringes. It will be the venue for several events, starting with a duo performance with artist Xavier Boussiron as part of their long-term project Le Manifeste de la Passion triste, (the Manifesto of Sad Passion), blending installation, video, performance and music. The following events, driven by the same spirit, show how trans-generational the artist is.

The second room is what sparked the invitation from MAC VAL. It presents SMS (Stop Making Sense), a work recently acquired by the Friends of Centre Pompidou and loaned along with certain other works from the Musée national d’art moderne during Centre Pomidou’s closure for renovations. SMS was initially installed in this form at Galerie Loevenbruck in Paris. It is made up of 365 collages identically framed and juxtaposed next to each other, one created each day from October 2021 to October 2022. Collage and the related techniques of photomontage, cut-up, assemblage, remix, mashup and sampling, which are simultaneously visual or textual languages and reservoirs of personal mythologies, are central to the artist’s practice. He wrote: “Hiatuses in form, improbable mixtures, rigged systems, secret motives, false erudition, everything is part of creating plural interpretations with no critical guarantee: to each their own.” The piece’s full title, Stop Making Sense, is borrowed from a Talking Heads album and comes from the very first collage, about which the artist wrote this sentence: “Pulling out a single meaning from it would have limited and oriented what occurs visually in each collage, and even more so in the final ensemble.”

The third room, titled ++ (overmore), is part of the logical continuity of SMS. Like most major exhibitions dedicated to the artist, the works are hung according to the principle of remix: here, elements that appeared in other configurations take on new life. Their quantity also provides justification for the chosen title, ++. Pieces from previous exhibitions intersect and create a retrospective in the form of a series (exhibitions: “Rien à branler des chiens”, 2003, “L’oignon fait la sauce”, 2012, “Étant damné”, 2021, “C’est écrit dessus”, 2025. Work: À la main du diable, 2013, Galerie Loevenbruck, group exhibition: “Les Maîtres du mystère”, 2012, Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac). Here, accumulation creates unity. In a previous exhibition, “Esprit es-tu là ?” (2016, at Villa Tamaris, Seyne-sur-Mer), the artist noticed that certain obsessions — the intertwining of major and minor registers — have persisted since his years at Beaux-Arts de Paris. “More than the chronology of works, their sum constitutes myself just as much as the objects that translate them.”

Echoing the three rooms, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux’s published works are displayed in several glass cases. From L’Acte pour l’art (1988) to LCDB, Le Culte des Banni.e.s (2023), Leçons de scandale (2000), Twist dans le studio de Vélasquez (1999), Je suis bouleversé (2007), Les gros cochons font de bonnes charcuteries (2011) and Duchamp (2020), these books testify to a critical and literary body of work that is just as dense as his visual art. “It’s no great leap between L’Acte pour l’art, Caravaggio and the ‘Banished’.”

Curated by
Director of MAC VAL
Nicolas Surlapierre

Curator of Contemporary Collections,
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou
Frédéric Paul