Out of bounds, drawing in the Frac collection

The exhibition offers a different take on drawing, with works that in some cases go beyond its strict definition as a work on paper. Here, drawing ventures into space, becomes movement, volume, flirts with painting, video or photography, and flourishes in installations alongside works that are more in keeping with its original definition.

The Frac's collection now includes almost nine hundred works, a significant proportion of which are drawings in the traditional sense of the term - the representation of a real or imaginary form, figurative or abstract, using graphic tools on a two-dimensional medium, usually a sheet of paper. But can drawing be reduced to this simple definition? Can it go beyond these limits?

Arte Povera and Land art artists had already answered this question in the affirmative in the 1960s, going against the grain of this museum categorisation and the theories developed in the 1940s and 1950s by the critic Clément Greenberg, who radically advocated the specificity and self-reflexivity of each medium. In doing so, they opened the way to a practice of drawing freed from the shackles of classification.

In this exhibition, drawing ventures into space, becomes movement, volume, flirts with painting, video and photography, and flourishes in installations alongside works that are more in keeping with its original definition. All these elements are brought together in a dialogue that traverses notions of silent music, purity, waves and vibrations; landscape, ecology and biodiversity; popular references and humour; not forgetting plans, sketches, preparatory drawings and, finally, performance drawings.

Through the prism of drawing, in the broadest sense of the term, Hors-limite takes visitors on a journey through a collection that itself questions the porous nature of artistic disciplines.
_

With works by Silvia Bächli, Neal Beggs, Julien Berthier, Marie Bourget, Robert Breer, Gérard Collin-Thiébaut, Philippe Decrauzat, Lise Duclaux, Vincent Dulom, Latifa Echakhch, ERNEST T., Sylvie Fanchon, Esther Ferrer, Tom Johnson, Zilvinas Kempinas, Kengo Kuma, Laura Lamiel, Micha Laury, Bertrand Lavier, Louise Lawler, Jean Le Gac, Rainier Lericolais, Angelica Mesiti, Max Neuhaus, Jean-Christophe Norman, Katie Paterson, Laurent Tixador, Olivier Vadrot, Jacques Vieille and Lois Weinberger.

Curator: Sylvie Zavatta, Director of the Frac