A proposal by Alain Bublex with Richard Baquié, Julien Berthier, Julien Bismuth, Alain Bublex, David Hockney, Taro Izumi, Jean-Yves Jouannais, Martin Kersels, Ed Kienholz,
Jarbas Lopes, Robert Rauschenberg, Lázaro Saavedra, Pierre Seinturier,
Ettore Sottsass, Peter Stämpfli, Keith Tyson and Jacques Villeglé.

Contre-allées (counter-alleys or sidewalks in English) is the title of a new series of photographs that Alain Bublex shot last year in Hong Kong. They complete the Plan Voisin de Paris series (2002), inspired by Le Corbusier’s project, in which the striking commercial signs that occupy the streets of the capital are located at the top of buildings drawn all around Paris Ring road.

The Contre-allées of the Plan Voisin de Paris are photographs mixed with digital drawing of the main buildings’ narrow backstreets. They include staff entrances, delivery areas and services and all the small shops that allow big companies to function. They are a sort of background to the Plan Voisin series. Just as the images of the Paris Ring road, the Contre-allées are dark and damp; the narrower streets are crowded with pedestrians rather than cars.

More generally, a “contre-allée” or sidewalk is a track parallel to a main track. When on the main streets one runs fast, on the counter-aisle one goes slowly and can even stop. This is the place for stops and U-turns. Sometimes even go the opposite way!

Thus, this exhibition becomes the perfect occasion to show a selection of pieces which in the work of their authors could correspond to this definition. Works accompanying a work or progressing in parallel without necessarily going to the same place… If we can say of a work, that it «goes somewhere». Let us say then that these are pieces that produce another rhythm, another atmosphere, different and coherent.

Finally, Alain Bublex had the idea to present various mediums (videos, sculptures, paintings, drawings, etc.) with his own works all within a site-specific installation. Creating a distortion of the walls in the gallery; improving the maze feeling of the 33 rue de Seine gallery space.

Actually, the installation is itself a counter-aisle of the whole exhibition and doubtlessly a counter-alley of Alain Bublex’s Plan Voisin de Paris series.