Le Tombeau (fable), 2004 – 2006
The Tomb (fable)
Foamcore, Plexiglass, wood, paint, printouts, lamp, and paper collage
7 1/2 x 23 x 16 3/8 inches (19 x 58.5 x 41.5 cm)
[JG1017.04]
In the corridor, a projector was to be periodically lit and extinguished, intermittently lighting the room. On the floor, a casual assortment of photographs, including Rodchenko’s ‘Pioneer Girl’ (1930) on top. Next to it is an orange dollhouse bed, reminiscent of the one depicted in Van Gogh’s famous Bedroom in Arles. Many reproductions of paintings run across the room: Matisse’s La Blouse roumaine and Nicolas de Staël’s Les musiciens, souvenir de Sidney Bechet flank an abstract picture by Hans Hartung. On the opposite wall hang three traditional portraits like in a portrait gallery. A citation from José Lezama Lima on one of the walls states: ‘La luz es el primer animal visible del invisible’ [Light is the first visible animal of the invisible].
At the last minute this maquette was transformed into a room, when it had been conceived as a gallery since the beginning of the exhibition.
Model 8 – Small Format
Le Meutre (sésame) (théorème) (montage), 2004 – 2006
Murder (sesame) (theorem) (editing)
Foamcore, watercolor, paper collage, Plexiglass, felt pen, film strip on plastic coils, glue, and mixed media
7 1/4 x 20 x 15 3/8 inches (18.5 x 50.5 x 39 cm)
[JG1015.04]
Painting, collage, book, photos, shot counter-shot, master and slave…
A notebook with the title Le livre noir du contre champ [The Black Book of the Counter Shot] is placed on a red table; when it is opened, one discovers a film scene: portraits of couples as well as a phrase by Racine from Bérénice; at the end ‘tu es / moi / tuez / moi [you are / me / kill / me]’ On the walls, The Toilet of Venus and Self-portrait by Velazquez, David’s The Combat of Mars and Minerva, and an engraving by Gustave Doré, are juxtaposed with a picture of two protesters during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. On another wall, a page from the Gutenberg bible, superimposed with the hand written first commandment: “tu ne tueras pas” [thou shalt not kill] is next to Godard’s notes on his theorem of montage: x+3=1. On the floor are collaged images of the Rosetta Stone and a picture of Sergei Eisenstein cutting rolls of film with scissors. Next to it are images of Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, and of Robert Mitchum holding up a knife in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. Emmanuel Levinas’s phrase on the failure of communication appears on one of the walls: ‘Ce que l’on présente comme l’échec de la communication dans l’amour constitue précisément le positif de la relation amoureuse. Cette absence de l’autre est précisément sa présence comme autre’ [What is presented as the failure of amorous communication, constitutes precisely the positive nature of the relationship; this absence of the other is precisely his presence as other.] Red, white and blue are the colors clearly structuring the room.