Ce Trouble Infini Qui Est Le Corps
The representation of the body has always played a central role in artistic thinking. Long considered one of the most complex subjects to depict, the human body has traversed the history of art in a wide variety of forms, reflecting a universal need for (self)representation. From mythology to anatomy to religion and history, the human body has always asserted its place in the world through its own representation. Both a working tool and an intermediary in the artistic gesture, the body fascinates as much as it questions. It has been so often represented, exhibited, disfigured, performed and obscured that we have had to deconstruct our vision of it in order to reappropriate it and finally distance ourselves from it once again. A vast and shifting subject, the relationship with the body cannot exist without the gaze, culture, society and mores that accompany it. So it's hardly surprising that artists are so troubled by the representation of the self. As Nicolas Bouvier puts it, 鈥楾he body, for better or for worse, is the image of the world鈥�2: it is as much subject as support, material, interface and medium. Our own perception of the body - our own and that of others - is constantly evolving, shaped by aesthetic codes that are constantly being redefined.A mediator between the intimate and the external world, it is both a symbol of free will and an envelope from which we will always be captivated. Perhaps that's where the frustration lies: a constrained space of freedom, a place of expression and transformation that must be constantly questioned. So, like an obsession, representing ourselves and others leads to a game of identification and staging that is as reassuring as it is troubling.
For Eva Ayache Vanderhorst, representing the body is like fighting against oblivion. On her canvases, the artist retains the fleeting memories she recalls, seeing the body as a vector of experience and a receptacle of memory. She navigates between the visible and the invisible, presence and absence - elements that shape our relationship to existence and to living in society, between the desire to belong and the need to escape. Mathieu Dufois plays with the codes of cinema and animated film to set his bodies in motion. He presents an enigmatic vision of the body that confuses the viewer. Very often it is a ghostly presence that haunts the composition. His figures emerge from the shadows and take on substance and form under the skilful strokes of his black stone drawings. Fran莽oise P茅trovitch also places the body at the centre of her drawings. Between the whites, the paper reserves and the immense washes of colour, large silhouettes take shape. These adolescent figures seem to float between materiality and disappearance, their almost liquid presence giving way to a feeling of suspension and wandering. Eric Manigaud takes a look at the battered, suffering body, marked by work or illness - a reality we are used to looking away from. Through meticulous pencil drawings, he recreates images from the past, often marked by violence and pain, making visible what memory tends to erase. In the same vein, Sandrine Pelletier reflects on the inevitable degradation of body and mind. The artist transcribes her intimate conversations with a relative affected by a degenerative disease. The engraved words, used to assess memory when diagnosing diseases such as Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis, become witnesses to the irreconcilable link between body and mind in the evolution of this type of illness. Pelletier also investigates the notion of the 鈥榚maciated鈥� body, the carnal envelope becoming too heavy a burden to bear with age and illness. Sophie Jodoin sensitively explores the female body, which becomes both a receptacle for experience and a witness to the wounds and scars it has suffered, and its relationship to vulnerability and intimacy. The artist's fragmented bodies, barely perceptible, are sometimes reduced to simple imprints, evoking the physical and bodily experiences of the female body and its flaws. Gongmo Zhou explores the mediation of the body through digital interfaces and screens. Aware that his relationship with the body is filtered through technologies in his everyday social relations, he questions this mediated perception of the human being. The artist materialises this tension in his representation of the reflective interface - a pane of glass, a door, a screen - and the image of the reflected body. The presence of the interface disturbs the immediate relationship with the body and the connection between two worlds, the virtual and the real. Through the works of these artists, the body is revealed in all its complexity: presence or absence, memory or oblivion, materiality or erasure.
Each practice questions our relationship with this carnal envelope which, although tangible, remains elusive in its representation.This exhibition invites us to rethink the body - in its intimate and communal conception - not just as an artistic subject or a simple form, but as a territory in perpetual mutation, constantly redefined by the gaze, memory and technology.
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The representation of the body has always played a central role in artistic thinking. Long considered one of the most complex subjects to depict, the human body has traversed the history of art in a wide variety of forms, reflecting a universal need for (self)representation. From mythology to anatomy to religion and history, the human body has always asserted its place in the world through its own representation. Both a working tool and an intermediary in the artistic gesture, the body fascinates as much as it questions. It has been so often represented, exhibited, disfigured, performed and obscured that we have had to deconstruct our vision of it in order to reappropriate it and finally distance ourselves from it once again. A vast and shifting subject, the relationship with the body cannot exist without the gaze, culture, society and mores that accompany it. So it's hardly surprising that artists are so troubled by the representation of the self. As Nicolas Bouvier puts it, 鈥楾he body, for better or for worse, is the image of the world鈥�2: it is as much subject as support, material, interface and medium. Our own perception of the body - our own and that of others - is constantly evolving, shaped by aesthetic codes that are constantly being redefined.A mediator between the intimate and the external world, it is both a symbol of free will and an envelope from which we will always be captivated. Perhaps that's where the frustration lies: a constrained space of freedom, a place of expression and transformation that must be constantly questioned. So, like an obsession, representing ourselves and others leads to a game of identification and staging that is as reassuring as it is troubling.
For Eva Ayache Vanderhorst, representing the body is like fighting against oblivion. On her canvases, the artist retains the fleeting memories she recalls, seeing the body as a vector of experience and a receptacle of memory. She navigates between the visible and the invisible, presence and absence - elements that shape our relationship to existence and to living in society, between the desire to belong and the need to escape. Mathieu Dufois plays with the codes of cinema and animated film to set his bodies in motion. He presents an enigmatic vision of the body that confuses the viewer. Very often it is a ghostly presence that haunts the composition. His figures emerge from the shadows and take on substance and form under the skilful strokes of his black stone drawings. Fran莽oise P茅trovitch also places the body at the centre of her drawings. Between the whites, the paper reserves and the immense washes of colour, large silhouettes take shape. These adolescent figures seem to float between materiality and disappearance, their almost liquid presence giving way to a feeling of suspension and wandering. Eric Manigaud takes a look at the battered, suffering body, marked by work or illness - a reality we are used to looking away from. Through meticulous pencil drawings, he recreates images from the past, often marked by violence and pain, making visible what memory tends to erase. In the same vein, Sandrine Pelletier reflects on the inevitable degradation of body and mind. The artist transcribes her intimate conversations with a relative affected by a degenerative disease. The engraved words, used to assess memory when diagnosing diseases such as Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis, become witnesses to the irreconcilable link between body and mind in the evolution of this type of illness. Pelletier also investigates the notion of the 鈥榚maciated鈥� body, the carnal envelope becoming too heavy a burden to bear with age and illness. Sophie Jodoin sensitively explores the female body, which becomes both a receptacle for experience and a witness to the wounds and scars it has suffered, and its relationship to vulnerability and intimacy. The artist's fragmented bodies, barely perceptible, are sometimes reduced to simple imprints, evoking the physical and bodily experiences of the female body and its flaws. Gongmo Zhou explores the mediation of the body through digital interfaces and screens. Aware that his relationship with the body is filtered through technologies in his everyday social relations, he questions this mediated perception of the human being. The artist materialises this tension in his representation of the reflective interface - a pane of glass, a door, a screen - and the image of the reflected body. The presence of the interface disturbs the immediate relationship with the body and the connection between two worlds, the virtual and the real. Through the works of these artists, the body is revealed in all its complexity: presence or absence, memory or oblivion, materiality or erasure.
Each practice questions our relationship with this carnal envelope which, although tangible, remains elusive in its representation.This exhibition invites us to rethink the body - in its intimate and communal conception - not just as an artistic subject or a simple form, but as a territory in perpetual mutation, constantly redefined by the gaze, memory and technology.
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