Product Description
Following the “Anthropomorphic Appearances” show, which was devoted to human representation, “Visited Landscapes,” the second in the “L’Homme nu” trilogy, aims to contrast different types of natures, horizons, or expanses, each example of which in its own way reveals its occupants, be it those who have forged the landscape, molded it, lived in it, or simply passed through it. Focusing on installation, the show can be broken down into two aspects. On the one hand, there is Pierre Malphettes’s “L’arbre sous un soleil électrique” (The Tree Beneath an Electric Sun), for instance. Designed on a human scale, Malphettes’s piece gives the impression of a possible, recomposed Japanese landscape that has been Westernized in the meantime. Beams and wood supports, carpet and light ball translate the essential elements of the tableau, namely, the tree, the moss on the ground and the rising sun. It is a reconstruction that recalls the kind done in Japanese gardens, which are themselves codified sub-collections of vaster expanses. Alexandra Bircken’s miniature landscape, which is made up of odds and ends of wool and small things taken from the natural world (leaves and branches) that have been meticulously arranged, also looks like a genuine composition. “Knitted by hand,” the piece points to a manual dexterity that is akin to traditional craft while calling up many references linked with the genre of landscape painting. The second aspect of the exhibition leans more toward a mental experience, where abstraction and spareness echo one another. “La Nostalgie de la boue” (Nostalgia for the Mud) is the evocative title of Dani Jakob’s installation, a sea of dried salt branching out in multiple directions, yearning to expand. In this grainy, arid, fibrous, desert landscape, objects from an expired, liquefied human civilization seem to have run aground. It is a somber Romantic-tinged atmosphere, while the mirror, in such an outlook, plays a symbolic role. Finally, in the distance, Alex Pollard’s “Beast”, with its prehistoric appearance, completes the picture by plunging the visitor into a suspended time. If man is physically absent from this show, we can always make out his presence midway between animal and plant.
Setting greater store by direct discovery and dialog, the three-part show “L’homme nu” (The Naked Man) features works that have been grouped under the theme of an anthropological reading. The idea is to rediscover forms and cultures, both ancestral and contemporary, with a particular focus on humanity. The representation, environment and lifestyle of humans form the three parts of this program. In their abstract, concrete, imaginary and poetic way, the featured works—in situ artworks, sculptures, drawings and objects—help to rearrange a universal landscape, one that lies at the crossroads of several cultures, while analyzing their mechanisms.
Borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss, the title “L’homme nu” proposes viewing man in his simplest state, as a kind of dummy to be dressed, with the different layers playing the role of succeeding impressions of civilizations, cultures, community practices, or social mores. This is man viewed in terms of influences that range indifferently from the familiar to the exotic geographically and historically. Anthropology, taken here as more than a mere subject, is treated in a roundabout manner. Like a new way of seeing, it brings to light a certain number of works that involve a sensitive approach to humans. In this regard, the invited artists, who come from very different worlds and don’t necessarily share the same view of human society, have been brought together through the works presented here.
