OFF(icielle) - Les Docks / Cité de la Mode - Stand A32
BLING BANG
The grinning Silenus, fools and buffoons who hide the well hidden and preserved treasure of goodness and truth. (Giordano Bruno, Spaccio)
At the time of the jpeg, as an extension to the «proof I’ve seen it», the exhibited artists turn the hidden treasure or the mystery surrounding its disappearance into the main subject of each of the pieces gathered around the theme «Bling Bang». This disappearance requires a specific rendering in each of the proposed pieces, that of an archeology of the vanished.
Thus, under the Silenus’ amused surveillance (L’homme-singe en fausse fourrure a disparu, 2014), Hélène Delprat invoques the mythical figure of the Yeti just as much as that of Diogenes, a philosopher freed from all shame and value judgement. Moreover, it is this similar comedy that Véronique Boudier’s Joyaux magiques (2014) denounces. With an exasperated frailty, the piece states its disagreement on the true value of things and thus denounces the importance given to bogus values in our society (cf. L’ane comme les silènes : les apparences sont trompeuses by Nuccio Ordine, Le Mystère de l’âne, Essay on Giordano Bruno).
With Isabelle Le Minh and Unglee, it is the photographic image that conveys the memory of «something that was» or of «I was». Thus, in the video This is the artist by I. Le Minh, the figure of the artist, his pose in front of the camera, both obey to codes of representation so over-used that they become common place and cliché. This archiving process is invested with a mission to compensate the forthcoming absence or disappearance. Moreover, it is that same absence that Unglee tries to conjure up. Through his well named «Disparitions» (disappearances) (1993 - 1998) he brings life to another himself. A fantasied self that he kills at his leisure only to resuscitate it, breathing a particular aura into this new «Unglee filmmaker and tulip maniac». Like a foretaste of immortality. An immortality that both Kassia Knap’s work through her use of gold, folds and canvas (Paysage, 2014) and this last Brûlure du Ciel by Daniel Pommereulle, try to aspire to.
Like a distant echo to this longing for transcendence that runs through all of art history. From the VIth century Byzantine painting to the work of Yves Klein. To go beyond the surface. Like an act of resistance. All that glitters is not gold.
«In America it’s Bling bling. Down here it’s bling bang.» Leonardo Di Caprio in Blood Diamond.
Christophe Gaillard
