Andy Rankin



        Hello, I am an independent self-taught curator based in Paris. I conceive exhibitions as performative protocols that can be activated by myself or others, unfolding through contingent interactions rather than static display. My curatorial practice is drawn to artistic strategies that embrace destruction, material transformation, and participatory engagement, questioning the exhibition space and its possibilities.

        For several years, I have been conducting an ongoing research on disasters and their iconographies, focusing on the ways catastrophes are aestheticized, archived, and re-enacted within artistic and curatorial discourses. This inquiry extends to the traces of lost, vanished, or missing artworks, culminating in the Oblivion Collection, a participatory online archive dedicated to gathering remnants and spectral evidence of disappeared art. By engaging with the visual and conceptual residues of destruction, my curatorial research interrogates what remains, what is forgotten, and how disappearance itself might become an artistic gesture.

Get updated herehello@andyrank.in


StudioPoush
153 Avenue Jean Jaures
93300 Aubervilliers Represented bypal project
39 Rue de Grenelle
75007 Paris

Nos abstractions sensibles



Location

Poush
153 Avenue Jean Jaures
93300 Aubervilliers

Dates

24 April 2024
12 May 2024

Co-curator

6ème 2 class of Collège Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers

Photo credits

Simon Jung

Artists

Xavier Benony, Ode Bernard, Michel Blazy, Etienne Bossut, Nicolas Boulard, Joël Ducorroy, Valentin Guillon, Tami Notsani, Ritual Inhabitual, Stéphanie Solinas,
Emmanuelle Villard

Statement


This year, curator Andy Rankin worked with the 6ème 2 class from Collège Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers to explore the notion of abstraction. How do you approach it, make it palpable and understandable, make someone feel it?

The abstraction revolution that took place throughout the 20th century was an incredible moment in the history of Western art. It was no longer a question of representing the world as it could be seen, but rather of how it could be felt. To immerse yourself in the world of abstraction is to let your imagination run wild, to play with a number of illusions, and to confront possible hallucinations.

Andy Rankin took this opportunity to reflect on his practice as an exhibition curator, so that the school children could experience the same pleasure he gets from curating exhibitions. After selecting a corpus of 120 works that might be considered close to abstraction, the pupils began a period of practical research on the subject, observing the world through prisms, looking at the phosphenes that appear when our eyelids are closed, and letting their imaginations run wild through a drawn dictation. Visits to exhibitions and a show provided food for thought on the theme and inspiration for the young curators.

They then instinctively selected around ten works for each of the themes: imagination, illusion and hallucination. In the manner of an exhibition visit, where our gaze stops on one work rather than another without us really knowing why, we kept certain works rather than others thanks to a majority vote. The class then listened to a number of recordings of artists explaining their work, as dialogue with artists is an important part of curatorial practice. Finally, we set up groups to explain the works so that everyone could understand them, choose them and defend them, culminating in a concerted selection before putting them on display in the POUSH exhibition space. 

The exhibition is part of Oeuvres en résidence, a programme devised and supported by the Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis and run by the Citoyenneté Jeunesse association as part of the La Culture et l'Art au Collège programme, in partnership with POUSH.