Christine Rebet: Escapologie

Christine Rebet is fascinated by sleight of hand and optical illusions, the principal forms of entertainment before the invention of motion pictures. She combines history and fiction by creating fantasy universes that play with her viewers' unconscious by means of deceptive measures, still employed in contemporary politics and the media. Drawing is at the heart of her artistic process and is closely linked to language and mime, as well as to sound and music. Christine Rebet uses animation, a hybrid medium in which the repetition of a drawing gives the illusion of movement, creating what she calls her 'paper cinema'.

Christine Rebet is fascinated by sleight of hand and optical illusions, the principal forms of entertainment before the invention of motion pictures. She combines history and fiction by creating fantasy universes that play with her viewers' unconscious by means of deceptive measures, still employed in contemporary politics and the media. Drawing is at the heart of her artistic process and is closely linked to language and mime, as well as to sound and music. Christine Rebet uses animation, a hybrid medium in which the repetition of a drawing gives the illusion of movement, creating what she calls her 'paper cinema'.

This catalogue, produced for the artist's first solo show at the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, brings together essential iconography in a selection of drawings and paintings as well as views of the exhibition. The volume includes a previously unpublished essay by the philosopher Emanuele Coccia, who already collaborated with the artist in the exhibition Trees (Nous les Arbres) at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris. There is also an interview with the artist conducted by Marilou Laneuville, curator of the exhibition, as well as essays by Isabelle Bertolotti, director of the macLYON; Lillian Davies, author and art critic; Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, an independent curator; Sébastien Rey, curator of the art of ancient Mesopotamia at the British Museum, in London; Hasan Hujairi, a composer and musician based in Bahrain; and Cécile Daumas, journalist and art critic. Bilingual edition, French and English