Laurent Mareschal — Mouvantes — Marie Cini Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 23 → March 23, 2013

Fragments which were asleep at the purgatory for years, these small pieces resurfaced as air bubbles. It’s actually their lightness they owe their survival. Their author accustomed us to long-term works, worthy of monasticpatience, not to ethereal, light things. Here everything is moving, hence the title.

From the entrance, we’re welcomed by a sort of ghost, captive of the wind, tied by hands, struggling. Le vent l’emportera shows a scarecrow dress, spectral appearance we better not have missed passing by a field under the oppressive summer heat.

Nearby, in La roue de la fortune, a gaggle of kids is trying to hold up on a playground game becoming centrifuge. Allegory of center and periphery, where most maintain…

We return to the agitated dress’ ghost and discover a picture that seems shot in the same landscape, the same intensely heated day in the biblical landscape of a palestinian village. A white line is emerging from the red earth path and divides the landscape in two. This is in fact the outline of the futur wall that now splits it in two. Laurent Mareschal had made it a performance: White Line and showed how the wall separates the village from its land. This picture, like the one that faces it, aren’t from Mareschal, but from Tami Notsani. The first one barely lights up a frontal house already circled by several illuminations, a weak orange tint on a black night background.The other one is a vaporous nocturnal where glow a sort of luminescent doe and a garland that runs along the roof of a house with windows closed. Strange contrast between the burning sun of Palestine and the cold burgundian nights, but it illustrates in a good way the biographical foundations of Mareschal’s work.

Downstairs, it’s nightime. Luciole is a vibrant moon, as a moth searching for a way out from the frame he’s captive of ; he bangs into it several times, and then finally finds an exit. Minimal video, burlesque haïku, this little form is the amused matching of the juxtaposed projection : _Illuminations. _On a nagging melody (Godspeeed you Black Emperor !) Christmas floodlights spread accross. Night is deep and cold, space is deserted and the garlands are believing in their purpose.

Mareschal reveals a kind of filmed diary, videos fom daily life to a subtle poetry.
Far from symbols that steeped in his beginnings he goes to light and purified allegories. This coherent sets shows a lesser-known aspect of his work and initiates new directions.

Roni Rofessoussim, independent curator, february 2013, Jerusalem