Wings, Curtain, Call is a solo show on conceptual and formal links that may exist between ritual and theater or entertainment. It’s a funeral environment. Death is a classic of art and this project aims to return to its poetic, numinous dimensions — fascinating and terrifying. As funerals, the exhibition is like procession: a way to consider artistic disciplines such as installation and sculpture related to the performative nature of ritual and theater. This project is an opportunity to bring back images of an great religious past or of an artificial spectacular present, references and gestures and to assemble them in a new light. Supernatural movements, surrealistic shifts, ghostly representations and special effects set up different scenes that viewers are invited to experience.
In this first exhibition of a cycle called The Death Show, the viewers are invited to experience three stages that each attempt to display a link — conceptual and formal — between ritual and theater. The funeral vigil is represented by the backstages, a place for metamorphosis. The procession becomes a mecanical theater: a curtain, synecdoche for the theater, guides us between the first and the third stage. Third stage is based on the idea of recall or curtain call, recalling an artist on the stage or an ancestor through a rite. Some sculptures representing fragmented bodies meet moving, almost dancing pieces of decor. Here there is an exploration of an aesthetic of the ghostly, of the disappearing and their necessary staging. That is why a large part of the sculptures and installations which constitute this exhibition are made of mechanical and digital system allowing them to be set in motion in a programmed sequence.
Wings, Curtain, Call. In Chroniques Parallèles, Audi Talents Prize 2017. From 21.06.18 to 14.07.18 @ Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Curator : Gaël Charbau. Stonewares produced as a duo with Tristan Dassonville. Photos : Christopher Barraja, Julien Maghalaes. Videos : Christopher Barraja, Julien Maghalaes, WorkinOn, Hugo L’ahelec