Collections d'Artistes

“The order was not that of an inventory, but that of a dream.“ — Georges Perec, A Gallery Portrait There was a time when to collect was to contain the world: to freeze it, classify it, keep it safe. From private cabinets to national museums, we sought to impose order on the dizzying abundance of things. Accumulate to understand. Possess to control. To line up artworks, name things, represent totality. But today, what we collect is no longer just objects — it is gestures, narratives, emotions, silences, absences. Contemporary art has often positioned itself in opposition to classificatory authority: rejecting norms, forging its own constellations. Today’s collector — and perhaps most of all, the artist — doesn’t inventory. They compose. Behind each collection or artwork lies not a museum, but a universe. Gathering is no longer merely an act of ownership. It becomes a way of relating, rather than accumulating. The things we choose to bring together speaks as much to what we refuse to forget as to what we wish to pass on. And what we exhibit is not a frozen inventory, but a singular narrative — a subjective, fragmentary, discontinuous, unstable memory. Collections d'Artistes raises three questions. Are artists themselves the objects of collections? Are they collectors in their own right? And are the collections presented here artworks in and of themselves — shaped both by the artists and the curatorial team? Seeing the artist as a collector, and collecting as an artistic gesture, opens up a multitude of possibilities. In this fusion of roles, it is not just objects that are collected, but ways of collecting — approaches, attitudes, methodologies, imaginaries. The exhibition design across the two floors of Le Commun reflects this by suggesting different types of spaces: a bourgeois interior; an urban outdoor setting; reversed storage spaces; a waiting room — for possession, or simply for action; and an immersive zone. The works in Collections d’Artistes are not for sale. Instead, in collaboration with an anonymous barter platform between artists and the public, most pieces are offered in exchange for services, professional proposals, or meaningful contributions. What is being traded here is a connection. In these Collections d’Artistes, if the artwork is the link, the collection becomes the relationship. There are no fixed boundaries — only flows, encounters, moments of tension between objects and gazes. This is not an inventory defined by static accumulation, but by its capacity to generate meaning and stories. A kind of spacetime constellation where artists, works, curators, and visitors come together in a vast amateur cabinet — a space of interconnected subjectivities. A milieu rather than a lineup. Show me your collection, I’ll tell you who you are.