Pierre Schwerzmann — Mars — Suzanne Tarasieve, Marais Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 9 → May 11, 2013

In the course of the time spent looking at these works by Pierre Schwerzmann […] a process develops that goes, so to speak, from effect to affect, wherein seeing is gradually transformed into attention, with the implications or, rather, complications that this engenders, these being of three kinds: visual or optical, physical or corporeal, and psychological or affective.

At first glance, then, the eye is attracted by the vibrations of the light well at the centre of the painting. The immediate effect of these vibrations is to prevent the gaze from settling and to incite the body itself to start moving in order to adjust. It is not a matter of the image as something that creates a distance […] but of a destabilising, repelling effect. The body/objectiveʼs attempt to adapt and grasp the image and thus fix it proves vain, and instability turns into a growing feeling of irritation. Do we end up seeing nothing at all? After all is said and done, does the picture have nothing more to offer than a splendid void? This willed irritation is already present in Schwerzmannʼs earlier works, but in this new series its radicalism goes beyond purely optical phenomena to insinuate itself into the body and then into the emotions — understood here in the etymological sense as that which moves out and agitates, and therefore makes us react. In this specific relational situation, these are like so many defence mechanisms before a moving image. It is as if there is a non-concordance between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, both temporally and spatially (or locally), taking the form not of an emptiness, but of an absence.

“I know that itʼs finished when I canʼt see any more."

Pierre Schwerzmann.

After a first showing of his work in the inaugural exhibition at her new space in Rue Pastourelle in 2011, Suzanne Tarasieve gallery presents the first solo exhibition by Pierre Schwerzmann, featuring an ensemble of abstract paintings.