Livret I — curated by Irmavep Club — Schleicher+lange Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 8 → February 26, 2011

For 2011, Irmavep Club is pleased to announce the beginning of a new cycle of exhibitions taking place in several Parisian venues over the course of the year.

LIVRET 1, the first stop of this itinerant program, is hosted by schleicher+lange galerie, Paris.

This first chapter takes as a point of departure a work by Jordan Wolfson entitled The light switch 27th floor (1931-2007). The particularity of this light switch is to be able to turn the overall exhibition on and off. It also comes from the Empire States Building and recalls the very particular story of the artist’s encounter with Mr Tortorelli, the building’s chief electrician. The viewer is given the opportunity to chose whether or not to bring light to the exhibition and to reveal its meaning. However, he can also chose to act like Bartleby who endlessly repeats “I would prefer not to”. ¹

This negative affirmation can be seen as the epigraph of this first Livret.

The works gathered in LIVRET I revolve around a common notion of avoidance. They consciously resist to the viewer’s interpretation and confront them to the absence of a singular reading. Rather than being a renunciation, this absence however gives the opportunity to catch a glimpse of a hypothetical origin. The works discretely reveal archeological traces of meaning that are barely buried.

¹ In Bartleby, Hermann Melville : «“I would prefer not to” is the never changing answer given by Bartleby,
a modest scrivener in a Wall Street office, to any request that is asked to him. This soft resistance, yet
absolute and irrevocable, gradually leads him to complete isolation.»