A MULTI-SITE EXHIBITION
The MéPIC is a museum scattered over some fifteen kilometres between Caen and the English Channel across a varied panorama in which activities both maritime and agricultural, seaside and riverside, can be found. Recent history has left numerous marks on this port land setting, and water is their common denominator.
Fifteen pavilions have been set up in the exhibition’s fifteen participating municipalities. Each pavilion takes the form of one or two containers, creating a gallery space. Artists have been invited to produce or display a work which will form a part of this setting in close relation with the chosen site, entering into dialogue with the other artistic projects to form an alternative museum in the landscape.
Each gallery has invited a cultural institution in the Basse-Normandie, Haute-Normandie and the Île-de-France regions to contribute to this collective dynamic by presenting works of contemporary art which revisit the basis of impressionism through the topic of water. The MéPIC containers, containing or the content of the work, have been placed at the artists’ disposal. They are a reminder of the industrial history and present-day reality of the Caen region and provide an ephemeral structure in keeping with the logic of the site, making people forget the intimidating aspect of museums.
MAKING THE MUSEUM SPACE LESS SACRED
This is an exhibition which rejects the idea of a doorway and an entrance. In keeping with the cultural approach to the landscape found in the Impressionist movement, the exhibition is the spatial expression of representations of the outside world.
The MéPIC is thus located where light, land and water meet. It extends to the landscape the task of being a museum open to every audience. Rather than assembling works of art and bringing people to them, MéPIC proposes an opposite approach, one that multiplies points of contact and renders the experience more culturally dynamic. It brings works of art into dialogue with each other from a distance, across the breadth of the region.