Salle d’attente III — Galerie Laurent Mueller — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 6 → July 20, 2013

« The conditions for looking at art are miserable. Shows are often full of people, a few of whom are idiots. You can only stand and look, usually past someone else. No space, no privacy, no sitting or lying down, no drinking or eating, no thinking, no living. It’s all a show. It’s just information. »

Donald Judd, Complete Writings 1959-1975

Because the fact is: quite often, we do not see anything. We are pushing our vision to see here, now, in three minutes, in thirty seconds. Why can one not sit more often in front of the artworks?

Salle d’attente III is the third instalment of an exhibition series based on the idea that waiting rooms are spatiotemporal parentheses which offer themselves to the contemplation of artworks.

At the galerie laurent mueller, this new experience unites 26 artists in two spaces linked by a staircase. Elvire Bonduelle invites Elvire Bonduelle invites Adam Ball, Michel Blazy, Côme de Bouchony, Fouad Bouchoucha, Rada Boukova, Nicolas Boulard, Pierre Charpin, Guillaume Constantin, Laurence De Leersnyder, Nathalie Elemento, Sammy Engramer, Julie Genelin, Liam Gillick, Aurélie Godard, Daniel Gordon, Ann Guillaume, Vincent de Hoÿm, Hanna Husberg, Niall Macdonald, Shana Moulton, Camila Oliveira Fairclough, Renaud Patard, Charles Petit, Romaric Tisserand and Adrien Vescovi. As if a single waiting time did not suffice, a second room is expecting the visitor upstairs.

The installation reminds us of medical waiting rooms, where each practician has added his contribution to the whole. One doctor hung up a painting by an artist friend, his colleague an inherited painting, while the anaesthesiologist inserted an antiquated etching, an out-of-fashion poster, and so on.

In our waiting room, the visitor will at first be taken aback. Can one sit on one of these three benches? After all, one does not sit on art but these cushions seem to invite us to. What can we read on them? Sit on it, Wait and See, Là ça va… All these injunctions to let oneself go, to patience, to rest. Well, let us sit down.

Left waiting, the visitor’s eye starts to wander on the walls, establishing unexpected links between the works. A coat rack, a monochrome, photographies, a wall clock, Brazilian words, drawings. From this disparate cast emerges a dialogue where the old distinctions between furniture, decoration and art are mixed. All is tangled, covering the tracks and the conventions.

On the first floor the tension mounts. Another waiting room. This one is much smaller, the ceiling is low and the two doors are closed. Covered with a cave-painting-like wallpaper, one would think to be inside a grotto, a cavern, the den of a doctor with strange tastes. Music alternates with a video, which, again, reminds us of this feeling of waiting. Keep on waiting, you are the next on the list.

A book developed by Elvire Bonduelle and published by the gallery will complement the exhibition. Launch projected on July 11th 2013.