Jamais-vu
Jean Guillaume Ferrée

With the exhibition JAMAIS-VU Dirk Dietrich Hennig is presenting the almost complete body of work of the unjustly forgotten artist Jean Guillaume Ferrée (1926-1974). Ferrées artisitic work can be situated in the context of Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme; it includes installations, sculptures, collages and photographs. His exhibition at the IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art is displaying 65 works and represents Ferrées largest museum show so far.

The artist’s biography, work and character are all marked by recurring memory losses; Ferrée had to undergo psychiatric treatment repeatedly. He died in 1974 under mysterious circumstances – at least, this is the story told by Dirk Dietrich Hennig. But the character and artist Jean Guillaume Ferrée is completely fictional – in fact, his work and biography are both conceived and created in every detail by the artist Dirk Dietrich Hennig.

It looks as if the fictional artist Ferrée had wanted to fill his memory gaps by means of his artworks – so detailed and pictorially rich these appear, mingling different kinds of possible stories. Still, the works which Hennig creates since 2004 in Ferrées name are more than a simple hocus-pocus. They owe their quality to a subtle strategy applied by he artist in combining historical facts with possible narratives. Thus Hennig adopts the role of a sophisticated visual storyteller and archivist while questioning our conceptions of art history.

View or download Le Bulletin № 1 : Jamais-vu as a Pdf file, in french popup:yes

Link to the exhibition catalogue Dirk-Dietrich Hennig – Jamais-vu – Jean-Guillaume Ferrée