For Jagna Ciuchta, on the other hand, artworks are viewed as living, moving forms, full of multiple possibilities for reappropriating or changing the uses and contexts they may encounter. It was in the town of Gets, where she stayed for a few weeks, that she prepared the Villa du Parc show while pursuing her earlier work on forms of popular art which she had begun recently during a residency in Noisy-le-Sec. In Haute-Savoie the artist became interested in vernacular culture like particular ornamental motifs of house frames, chainsaw carving, or amateur paintings picked up in flea markets and junk shops. Such bits of folklore are then incorporated in her practice and unexpectedly resonate with artworks or artists she has already crossed paths with in earlier shows. The abstract sculptor Henry Moore and the minimalist Sol LeWitt, for instance, who were already present in her work by way of tourist photography, resurface in the Villa du Parc, aspects of their works having been taken in and digested by local crafts. They are joined by Bernard Buffet, a popular artist and longtime favorite of amateur painters. These mischievous hybrids thumb their nose at the decorum of art hierarchies and question both taste’s judgment and the sacralization of style. Surrounded by other recent pieces, these new works are part of an approach that must be understood over time and through various echoes, as it develops within cycles of works whose re-creation, display, and meaning are tied to the specificities of the exhibition context.

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