CUFF WITHOUT DUCK / SMOG OU SOLEIL
The crypt in the church I like
has two big crystal candles
with glass bulbs gone
Produced for this exhibition, the work of Gianmaria Andreetta and Ivan Cheng consists of a metal sculpture, publication and performance. Inspired by the magician’s box in which an assistant appears to be sawed in half, the case contains a ‘puppet’ previously animated by the two artists. The publication situates and fictionalises a visit of two characters to Donald Judd’s loft in New York, recently restored into a cultural attraction. Interspersed with anecdotes and descriptions that travel through several places and times, it aligns in logic with the aluminum and brass case, invested in the relic; the object of value that is visible, hidden and preserved.
Special thanks to Bastien Gachet and Emilie Ferrat
--
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?
What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own,
until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
I could be easy to swallow but yet I am not and it is quite visible that I do not fit into your
mouth and imagine you did put me into your mouth, taste me, chew me, every bit of me
stuck between your teeth and glued onto your tongue, swallowed me with all my words.
Could you have swallowed my words ? Could you have carried my words inside you,
all the words I have not needed to say yet, not dared to speak out yet and the words I
have not had the time to imagine yet too ? Oh please, it is then that you do not know that
I spend hours daily inventing my new words and that they are at times indigest. But I
prefer indigest words than the tyrannies of silence, I prefer to be at times unsure,
unstable, I prefer to slip and fall, and I even prefer to be wrong, than to be wordless.
Bringing together works of Aso Mohammadi, Nathalie Preisig, Gianmaria Andreetta and
Ivan Cheng, I could be easy to swallow marks the first anniversary of Espace 3353 and
the HOY collective and inaugurates a second annual programming cycle that gathers
artistic practices focused on voicing narratives - questioning which and whose narratives
are yet not voiced. The subject of this first exhibition is at turns dog, puppet, machine,
mother - as it explores being still, moving, absent, same and transformed, invisible, too
loud, multiple and unique - silent, resisting, forced and willing.