De toi à la surface — Frac île-de-france, le Plateau — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 21 → April 10, 2016

The prop master places the objects essential to the story on the set where it will unfold, but must the story necessarily be told? Props aim at making up an environment and at creating the conditions for the action, in the absence of any actor. Thus both a scene and a narration are established, based on elements placed one after another, one on top of each other, one behind the other. In any case, the boundaries between these categories become porous as soon as the accessories replace the actors.

The way we understand this story depends on our capacity to interpret the accessories as we would pieces of evidence or items from a collection. One could call this « l’esprit de l’étagère » (the shelf wit) — unlike l’esprit de l’escalier (the staircase wit), one does not think of a reply too late but instead finds personal qualities in objects that are physically devoid of them.

In short, the spiritual complement that we give objects belongs to us alone. Thus we are used to objects fulfilling functions other than what their original design intended — it is this observation that brought the artists of this exhibition together. They all present objects that are easily recognisable for what they are, and which also evoke a narration or feelings. The importance lies in the ‘and’, in the overlapping. This is where an entirely new relationship is built, where our emotions give objects their evocative power. These works can be seen as just so many moments in which our feelings harmonise with our environment in a way that is both irrational and unexpected.