Mark Geffriaud — All that is said is true... — Gb agency — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 29 → December 21, 2011

All that is said is true
all the time
all the time

All that is said is true
all the time
but times change

Genesis P-Orridge
in The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
a film by Marie Losier
released on October the 26th

Mark Geffriaud’s work constantly refers to somewhere else, like a rendez-vous leading from one to another. His second exhibition underlines Mark Geffriaud’s wish for exchange and a constant flow between works, ideas, forms and people.
Even the title of the exhibition ’All that is said is true, all the time, all the time (…) on October the 26th’ follows this principle by quoting words from a coming-movie. Every element of its construction is an echo from an older story or to a future project, in a different space. The gallery becomes the passage in which things build themselves to exist somewhere else, the pretext to tell a story, the extract of a narrative, fragments of a memory or a module of a house.

The exhibition gathers two new works, an older work introduced in 2009 which continues to develop in a space-time still to be defined and also a performance, realized the opening day.

Geffriaud suggests with Shelter the construction of a house. He imagines a method in progress ; in every new exhibition, he will be able to build a part of this house environment: a room or an architectural element, defined by the measurement and the economy of the space which receives it. This architecture will be built day by day, in a simultaneous discussion with others, in which everyone will bring his own competence, in gb agency the first stone has been conceived and realized with the artist Cyrille Maillot. Once assembled, these modules can find the right place to welcome the set. Having taken the imprint of a space to create the other one, it will be necessary to find a correspondence to fit into it. The system of correspondence floats between a concept of economy and an art market one, between a project with friends and the realization of a piece of art.

Shelter is transformed in the time and the space as The light that moves against the wind, 2011. The installation is composed of four lenses of blown glass filled with water, a light and a paper screen. The spectator, by penetrating into the space, slightly moves this paper screen which receives the refraction of the enlightened objects. Thanks to the movement in the space, the shapes reflect on paper waves. Again, there is a correspondence between the artist’s breath and a draft provoked by the spectator, between an image and a sculpture, between a scientific object and the chance of a movement.

Cyrus, 2009 is the name by which Mark Geffriaud indicates an object which he stole from the artist Eric Stephany in 2009. They agreed that it could stay in Mark Geffriaud’s possession as long as its owner would not know what he was missing. Once Eric Stephany realizes the existence of the missing object, he will immediatel­y restitute it and the work will no longer have a material existence. They will not speak about it anymore and it will disappear gradually to fall again into the oversight. For now the object is sometimes confined to a curator, a museum attendant or to someone else present, with the instruction to keep it in its pocket during the exhibition duration.

During the opening Mark Geffriaud will present Nouvelle refutation du temps, 2010 ; with Géraldine Longueville he’ll propose a simultaneous lecture of two Borgès’ essays. Written in 1944 and 1946, they incessantly meet and cross.

This exhibition is the receptacle of multiple narratives and exchanged words. Mark Geffriaud reveals to us a global as well as a split up vision. It is somewhere else, after the exhibition and outside of the gallery that its stakes become decisive.

¹ This exhibition received support from la ville de Paris.
Realisation of the lens with the collaboration of the Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts plastiques.