Between Dog and Wolf: International Artist-in-Residence, Julie Grosche

Grosche has been filming Between Dog and Wolf during her one month residency at MSU. While dwelling in Bozeman, Grosche has traveled to the Pryor Mountains, Yellowstone, Hyalite Canyon, and other Montana locations to illustrate her narrative. Using volunteers and students in the fictional film, Grosche’s research investigates the Medieval myth of the supernatural horse, Bayard. A horse of extraordinary talents, Bayard is depicted in texts from the 12th – 19th centuries in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Believed to be the progeny of a serpent and dragon who was freed from a mythical volcanic island, Bayard earned the ire of King Charlemagne by elongating his back and ferrying four knights who were escaping the king. Given to Charlemagne as a peace-offering for the offense, Bayard was thrown in the bottom of the Rhine with heavy stones around his neck. Escaping this death, Bayard fled into the Ardennes Forest and, according to legend, can be heard neighing in the forest during the summer solstice.

Grosche transposed this myth from the European forests onto the landscape of Montana – itself a mythic site in the Western and American imagination. Fusing the image of the wild mustang and Bozeman local knowledge of the lands and horses, Grosche filmed the wilds of the Montana autumn to reconstruct a new legend:

“This piece is about dissecting an ancestral object filled with collective and personal memories, a key to the evolution of humanity, the dream of a young child, a strong animal often attributed to girl’s dreams, a vehicle, a weapon of war but also an image. The horse has always been portrayed by artists who fascinated by them, never stopped reproducing them. Like a sculptor, I’m defining it’s contours and through different stories, legends, and relations as I construct a new image.”

Between Dog and Wolf is a single-channel film accompanied by song and music created by Julie Grosche and musician Airport. Students have joined Grosche on outdoor ventures, learning from a career artist. Gathering volunteers to demonstrate behaviors such as wrestling, breathing, and running in a pack-like manner, Grosche’s film tells the story of humans making a new way of life, as from the viewpoint of that mystical horse:

“Between myth and a cult I really try to interrogate systems of beliefs. Believing into a magical horse, reality TV, believing that we make empathetic choices, that the wind or solar energy is the future. In this video, a new group gather around a new belief, a new trend, a new diet, they codify their new religion built around worshipping a horse.”

Julie Grosche (b.1986, France) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Richmond, VA and is a graduate of Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Dijon, France. Grosche has exhibited internationally including in NYC, Barcelona, Paris, Brussels, Cleveland, MIami, and Los Angeles. She co-founded PMgalerie in Berlin; Bcc, an itinerant curatorial platform; and ASMBLY based in NYC. She is the director of the Summer Studio Program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website