Paris. The launch, at the start of the 2025 school year, of its “New Program” is an opportunity for the Pernod Ricard Corporate Foundation to evolve its prize, created in 1999, while recalling the fundamentals of its support for the French scene. Change of approach therefore, to turn our back on the spirit of competition which is not popular with a generation more inclined to collaborative projects. The media impact of this distinction, beyond the publicity effect, was undoubtedly questionable. The overall budget allocated remains the same (around €60,000), and the principle of a collective exhibition remains, but refocused on three artists who benefit from personalized support, in particular to develop a “tailor-made” project, production or residency, in partnership with institutions – in France or abroad.
The emphasis is always placed on emergence, defined not by belonging to an age group, but by a lack of visibility of the artist’s work, particularly in France. The foundation entrusts a guest curator with the task of choosing and bringing together the lucky ones. Director since last July of the curatorial department of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Liberty Adrien, curator and art critic who sits on the editorial board of TextWork, the Fondation Ricard’s online editorial platform, is leading this edition. She is also co-director of Portikus in Frankfurt, where she has worked on monographic exhibitions by Adrian Piper (2024), Philippe Thomas (2024), Simone Fattal (2023) and Lap-See Lam (2023), as well as group exhibitions featuring Thomas Bayrle, Ayse Erkmen, Slavs and Tatars, Derek Jarman, Sarah Maldoror and Cecilia Vicuña, among others. She explains that she wanted “present lesser known practices” making sure to find personalities likely to get along in this exhibition with the deliberately ambiguous title of “Sorry Sun”.
The journey begins with the series Triple Insert by Alexandre Khondji (born in 1993). This places the void in the center and examines the architecture of the foundation using endoscopic cameras, the images of which appear on the screens of three monitors embedded in the walls. The minimal aesthetic of this in situ conceptual creation creates an airlock effect, while in the second room, the illuminated sculptures of Hélène Yamba-Guimbi (born in 1993), placed on the ground, dialogue with the trains of the Saint-Lazare station visible below, in a playful and disconcerting scale relationship. You have to get closer to distinguish the photos, taken in Los Angeles, of disused urban spaces, inserted like miniatures in these transparent boxes. In the third room the film is shown 18,000 worlds by Saodat Ismailova (born 1981), filmmaker and visual artist, interweaving archive images and other shots in Central Asia, where she is from, into a dreamlike narrative. This short exhibition asserts without didacticism a tone and the contours of an art, nourished by theory, critical research as well as popular stories, listening to the world.
