Contemporary creation: into the beating heart of the POUSH artists’ residence
As the Paris contemporary art scene comes back to life (see related article in our PB magazine), our expert Laurent Issaurat, Head of Art Banking at Societe Generale Private Banking, crossed the threshold of POUSH — an artists’ residence exemplifying this creative effervescence. Launched in 2020, POUSH hosts over 250 artists today, a growing number of which are international. Laurent Issaurat met with its charismatic director, the curator Yvannoé Kruger.
Laurent Issaurat: What are the key dates and figures that define POUSH?
Yvannoé Kruger: Launched in March 2020 at the initiative of Hervé Digne and Laure Confavreux-Colliex, the founders of the cultural engineering agency Manifesto, POUSH is a space with local roots and a global reach where contemporary artists can create and exhibit. It was launched in March 2020 at the initiative of the Manifesto cultural engineering agency, and started out in the Tour Fudicial — a high-rise in the Paris suburb of Clichy. Together with most of the Clichy artists, the project migrated to another Paris suburb, Aubervilliers, in 2022 where it occupies 20,000 square metres of a former perfume factory (L.T. Piver), belonging to the Société de la Tour Eiffel, for a period of two years. Today we have over 250 artists with access to affordable creative studios (rent is around 10 euros per square metre per month). The space is highly sought-after by the artists, and choosing the artists themselves is no small matter: our last call for applications drew in over 700 applicants for 80 places.
Laurent Issaurat: What kind of artists is the residence for?
Yvannoé Kruger: We accommodate an extraordinarily wide range of practices: painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, but also writing, poetry, dance, musical composition and performance — any work that has the potential to resonate with other contemporary practices or manifest in visual pieces. The average age of the artists is around 35. Some residents are fresh out of art school, while others are already established and represented by a gallery, want exposure to the ebullience of younger generations. Geographically speaking, nearly 40% of our artists are foreign, hailing from the United States, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Central Europe, or elsewhere. This increasingly international representation without a doubt reflects the revived appeal of Paris in the creative space.
Laurent Issaurat: How are the studios arranged?
Yvannoé Kruger: For practices gravitating around drawing and painting for instance, the factory’s former administrative offices prove excellent individual work spaces in some cases. Artists of other practices may need specific equipment, in which case we offer them big studios that can accommodate four to eight creators. Ceramicists, for example, will work in an area where they can take out and bring in heavy objects and install kilns. Similarly, we have an entire floor dedicated to sound practices. Here we host the American composer Richard Sears, Anne Le Trotter, and the U2P050 collective from IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) which designs immersive installations using artificial intelligence. This arrangement according to the specific needs of each artistic practice occurred quite naturally.
Laurent Issaurat: And am I right in understanding that the artists benefit from support well beyond square metres and equipment?
Yvannoé Kruger: Yes, that’s right. We support the residents in a so many ways: helping them prepare their applications for requests for proposals, drawing up contracts with galleries, filing tax returns, and so much more! And today we are fortunate enough to raise their visibility in a powerful way by bringing in professionals from the art world on a regular basis. More importantly, the artists have outstanding exhibition spaces at their disposal, including a 2,000 square-metre hall, a boxe in our bar-restaurant, La Bodega, as well as underground and outside spaces. All these areas of play and freedom for the artists make visitors “momentary witnesses” in a way. POUSH is also a place for socialising: our residents meet up during the day or the evening for drinks, coffee, or to taste the delicious cuisine of our chef. This “POUSH spirit” is probably why most of the artists decided to follow us when we moved from Clichy to Aubervilliers.
Laurent Issaurat: You mentioned visitors. Does that mean people can stop by?
Yvannoé Kruger: Absolutely! We are not a museum or an art centre open to the public in the traditional sense, but visitors can come to Aubervilliers to meet us and discover the work of our residents by appointment, on Pro Bono Days(1) or during our opening times, which we are expanding. Visitors can also view the work of guest artists, like during the recent “Félicités” exhibition from the Beaux-Arts de Paris. At the previous edition of the Paris+ par Art Basel fair in October last year, we welcomed many international art collectors and enthusiasts, some of whom had less difficulty crossing the city ring road — the périphérique — than some Parisians! For a New-Yorker or a Tokyoite, coming to Aubervilliers comes naturally once you are in Paris. It’s like crossing the Brooklyn Bridge when coming from Manhattan! We are organising more and more tours of our exhibitions, available by reservation, so that the general public — and especially local residents — can visit this emblematic venue in Seine-Saint-Denis that has long been inaccessible. So, please feel free to come and meet us. You are in for some wonderful surprises!
(1)For the quarterly Pro Bono Days, POUSH opens its doors to thousands of professionals from the local and international art world (curators, art historians, art dealers, collectors, and institution directors, etc.) so that they can meet the artists and see their work.
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