Latifa Echakhch on view at Magazine CNAC, Grenoble

'Good Service, Good Performance'

Masterpieces of Latifa Echakhch will be shown alongside Mimosa Echard, Hans Haacke, Hiwa K, Stéphanie Nava, Pipilotti Rist, Utopia Station, Carey Young, Gillian Wearing, Wang Du, and Anne Le Troter 

Curated by Céline Kopp, assisted by Alexia Pierre

An exhibition conceived and produced by Magasin CNAC

In partnership with the IAC - Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes

Magasin CNAC is pleased to announce the program for the group exhibition "Good Service, Good Performance," a look at the collection of the IAC - Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes. The selection of works gathered, created between 1981 and the present day, reflects the desire to rediscover them and make them resonate with our present, alongside new works specially produced for the occasion. Can we still think about the idea of ​​utopia, while we are evolving in a world profoundly transformed by hyper-connectivity, the democratic crisis and new surveillance dynamics? What does an iconic project like Utopia Station, conceived in 2003, in the post-9/11 era, tell us about this? How can we view the work of English artist Gillian Wearing dancing in a shopping mall in 1994, in the light of Tik-Tok? In 2025, while big tech and the rise of authoritarianism are disrupting our interactions and redefining our relationship to information, these works bear witness to issues that, already in the 1980s to 2010s, question the fabrication of narratives, the commodification of language, the staging of the self and the possibility of spaces of dissent. Individually or collectively, the works reveal how our bodies, desires, and lives participate in these dynamics, adapting to or resisting imposed norms, whether social, media-based, or political.

The film by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (Entlastungen - Pipilottis Fehler, 1988) opens the exhibition and gives it its title—"Good Service, Good Performance"—a translation of the text read on screen. In this work, the artist transforms sonic and visual malfunctions into fault lines where the body vacillates, revealing the instability of the systems that govern us. These disruptions become a form of liberation and open an intimate and poetic relationship with the machine, where letting go challenges the logic of conformity and accomplishment.

The exhibition thus explores the relationship between the injunction to perform in our contemporary society and the refusal of bodies—particularly female bodies—in the face of this demand for (re)productivity. Through the works, "Good Service, Good Performance" offers an experience of screams, lies, absurd recitations, humor, and silences. We encounter organic and industrial poultices, sexual organs transformed into plants, and sculptures that must be bitten to be heard. Bodies breathe heavily, dance, and come to blows in debates about culture and identity that resolve into wrestling matches.

"Good Service, Good Performance" questions these tensions between discipline and excess, control and abandonment, truth and staging. In a world shaped by algorithms, where public discourse oscillates between overbidding and censorship, the works on display remind us how art illuminates our present and remains essential for thinking about its transformations.

read more HERE