Tracé(s) — Perception Park Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 30 → July 19, 2014

Tracé(s) is a curatorial project opening a cartographic reflection in contemporary art. Introduced in 2013 at the Lot10 gallery in Brussels, the first chapter contained a political and memorial dimension with the presentation of works from Laurent Ajina, Morgane Denzler and Till Roeskens. Perception Park gallery is hosting the second chapter which draws new cartographic perspectives.

The exhibition is based on the concept of mental projection maps, topography and territories. The works of Caroline Corbasson, Nicolas Desplats, Vanessa Fanuele Pascal Lievre, Laure Tixier and Thomas Tronel Gauthier deploy different types of geographies: intimate, psychological, phantasmagorical, symbolic or physical. It consists in observing how the viewer may be led to think, to imagine and draw a map or a landscape through a selection of works that open passages and spaces of projections. Outside and inside are convened: the works throw us back into ourselves (our memories, references and imagination) while going beyond us (nature, drifting, elsewhere). The works articulate a dialogue between openness and containment, the artists call together different types of projections.

Caroline Corbasson, Eclipse, 2014 Graphite sur globe terrestre — 45 × 35 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Perception Park, Paris

The wall painting of Laure Tixier, Map with a View (2014), suggests a double reading. The black shape is unknown to us, it first recalls symbolic fields from esotericism, astrology or ancient forms of writing ; revealing, in fact, to be a prison map. The imagination leads us to fantasy while reality brings us back to the idea of control and authority. On the opposite side, Pascal Lièvre takes over the ten drawings of the Rorschach test made with black glitter dust. Developed in 1921, the projective test implies a psychological evaluation by the interpretation of ink spots. The reading of shape could bring some understanding keys of the viewer’s personality.

Vanessa Fanuele, Plis, 2012 Graphite et encre sur papier — 32,5 × 23 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Perception Park, Paris

There is an intimate and subjective progression in Vanessa Fanuele’s drawings. The line drifts, intertwines and hybridizes itself. It is the visual outcome of a personal research where the inside (the organic) comes together with the outside (the psychic).

The drawings open new territories in which the work of Thomas Tronel Gauthier could be the imprint. The Last Piece of Wasteland (2011) is a mold of natural earth, its black color sending us towards hostile areas (volcanic, subterranean), even unknown. The imprint invites us to follow the projection of a landscape.

Caroline Corbasson completly covered the surface of a globe with graphite (Eclipse). The drawing of the seas and continents is concealed under a gray metallic layer. Even if the lines are unseen, the mind can’t help but mentally retrace them.

A response also induced by the mysterious content of the paint cans by Nicolas Desplats. Upotia suggests the idea of a liquid map which, through some magic intervention, could be applied on the wall or on the floor.

The artists appeal to an interaction between the eye, the mind and the memory, activated through a projective process that generates a cartographic plurality animated by cognitive and sensitive references. Suggested, fragmented, enclosed or covered, the map escapes from norms to liberate the imaginary.