Thierry Mouillé — Cosmosaïque — Claudine Papillon Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 12 → July 20, 2012

Swaying like a Chinese along the polarity line, Thierry Mouillé gives not a damn about logical limitations. Worse, he uses them and as soon as the critics give a definition of his work, he promptly displaces something that renews all assessments.

Stricken with the irreversible talent of travelling only in the middle of a force field, Thierry Mouillé comes back with the good vibes. That’s because he’s chosen his side and hides behind the uncontrolable label of Moving Foundation, which suits him better than any administrative ID would.

The Moving Foundation resembles the planet’s revolution: it is not to be stopped, so let’s stop by ourselves and see what’s the present state of its activities.

No scandal is to be seen here, nothing else — and that’s allready something — than a disrespectful invite to play by all means. Only Gulliver can move the oversize puppets ridiculously hanging here and there from the ceiling. But we can make a jazz session on each and every brass instrument, with all its available nozzles. These instruments’ shape is not quite harmless for the interpreter, who can speculate endlessly about what they mean: one is made out of a blackboard, another is a riot barrier… Moreover, on some of them we take the risk of blowing right into our own ears. Talking about blowing air, Thierry Mouillé tends to play down his own condition, describing himself as an entertainer. Let’s not take this litterally, he’s far more serious than he wants to appear, although his work is amusing indeed. What he does actually entertain is the primitive idea of blowing — that is, the breath of life. In latin soul and breath are the same word, which the jazzy context of this show demonstrates in a joyfull tone.

18 years ago (just the time it takes to come of age) Thierry Mouillé suggested that the combined breaths of 6 billion people could counter the millenarian threat by blowing all together, the minute before year 2000 would start. All this mess about exhaling was aspiring to modify the planet’s orbit. It is not unlikely that his wish was granted, since the earth’s axis, as we came to know a little later, reviewed its position.

Boosted by this astonishing support from the outer world, Thierry Mouillé tightened the links he’d already established with science. That we can see in the video showing 5 years of lessons Pierre-Louis Lions gave in the prestigious Collège de France. Cut so as to erase all moments of usual understandable thinking, the sequences are edited backwards, and the famous professor grows younger as we see him only rubbing away the equations he just worked out. Imaginary new mathematical theories appear in this combination, and when we spare a moment to listen to the words, they magically seem to all talk about art.

The best knowledge available is here considered as raw material and respected as such. In pieces which seem to belong to another category, the artist scraps the edge of frames, just like a shepherd notching his stick, and transforms the trimmings into drawings. The small wooden remains lend themselves to their new becoming, and suddenly turn into Hans-Hartung or Kandinsky travesties.

We’ll find another mischievous reverence in the chair piece. A vintage Charles Eames seat levitates on the trumpet pipes that replace its original feet. We can neither sit on it nor scratch the ground with the Moebius rakes and brooms lined up at the other side of the room. The endless saw doesn’t at all look like the usual ∞ symbol for infinity. In fact the infinity in question here is that of Brancusi…

The screen holder holding court under the spotlights is hung with lace. Not with netting, not either with embroidery, not even with fishing net. Just plane white industrial lace. Do as we please, we’ll have to project our own experience of cheap transparency, our own immaculate fantasies, our own conceptions in shadows cast through the figure. And the figure, we’ll have to do with it, is not in the carpet here.

Every way we go in this exhibition, the dimensions the Moving Foundation explores offer us a trip in the superstrings.

Thierry Mouillé’s misfortune lies in his conscience, which is neither good nor bad but dramatically right, that is right on target, right there, where there are just as many fronts as backs, ups as downs, opposites as same, just as much of everything as of nothing. By and large, in the centre of the universe, which he therefore has to scan over and over in all directions.

Thierry Mouillé’s fortune lies within the fact that the careful visitor sees the result of this exhausting perceptiveness, and can feel immediate complicity and pleasure.

Thierry Mouillé was born in Poitiers. He lives and works in Paris. He studied Fine Arts in Poitiers, Tours and Bordeaux and is now a teacher in Annecy. Pricewinner of Villa Medici in 2007-2008, his work is part of numerous private and public collections. 2012 exhibitions: Anicroches (Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton), Extrapérimental (Angle Centre for contemporary art), Mobile-Immobile (Amiens Museum of Fine arts), Méditerrationnel (at the Marseille School of Fine arts’ instigation), Marseille Festival des arts éphémères (festival of ephemeral arts)