“Parties Prenantes” is now a regular event at Bétonsalon: with each new exhibition, we organize a collective session where we delve into the archives of a past exhibition. It is an opportunity to explore the history of Bétonsalon and Villa Vassilieff by collectively examining the traces, narratives, memories, and voices of previous projects.

For this new session, we are opening the archives of “Groupe Mobile” (2016), the inaugural exhibition at Villa Vassilieff, curated by Mélanie Bouteloup and Virginie Bobin. Based on the exploration of the Marc Vaux collection held at the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition aimed to reexamine photographs taken between the 1920s and 1970s in the artist studios of Montparnasse, such as the one belonging to Marie Vassilieff, by questioning their production context, the multiple lives of the works, and the associated stories, while fostering a dialogue with contemporary artists and researchers. This is a chance to revisit a key moment in the history of Bétonsalon with Ellie Armon Azoulay, research associate for this exhibition, and Camille Chenais, who was completing an internship at that time and later became head of exhibitions and residencies at Villa Vassilieff.

“Groupe Mobile” resonates with the current exhibition by Florian Fouché, which is also shaped by questions about archives and the social history of artworks, with shared references to Brâncuși.