The National Automobile Museum presents the exhibition project Automobiles. A story of conceptual innovation by the French artist Alain Bublex, a journey that explores the automobile as space, form, and imagery, tracing its evolution from 1802 to today. The exhibition brings together different bodies of work: forty-four works that combine texts and images to construct a history of the automobile through often lesser-known models; two video projections that present, on one hand, a set of technical drawings and, on the other, a sequence of naturalistic drawings of automobiles; notes and original sketches made by the artist during the study; and ten 1:10 scale models of automobiles from the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.

The project originates from a commission by the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain which - on the occasion of the Autophoto exhibition (2017) - entrusts Bublex with writing a text on the history of the automobile and the evolution of its forms from 1802 to today. During this writing process, the work A l'abri du vent et de la pluie (Sheltered from the wind and rain) also takes shape, an installation composed of a selection of ten 1:10 scale automobile models.

The sculptures, reduced to the essential forms, do not describe the models in detail, but retain their minimal characteristics, still recognizable. The choice of models itself is the result of what the artist defines as a "wandering" of ideas, of free associations that occur during a conversation. Each model is a repository of memory: an image that reactivates memories, prompts associations, opens up other thoughts. It is this non-linear movement - made of returns, deviations, and hypotheses - that structures Bublex's work.

Imagining a book that collects all unrealized automotive forms, the artist presents forty-four digital drawings distributed over two centuries of design and production - accompanied by two video projections - created during the study that outline a path that traverses the idea of the automobile as a "closed space that contains and transports us," reflecting how this object has contributed to transforming our view and our idea of the world.

Alain Bublex is a French artist who works between art, design, and architecture, exploring the processes of design and the forms of modernity. Through sculpture, drawing, and writing, he investigates the objects and spaces that have shaped contemporary imagination, with particular attention to the automobile and its possible scenarios.