Aldéhy

Project 1998 genesys

Le Creusot, Pacifique-Sud : Interférence.

In this new project, I imagined the meeting of two worlds, as different as could be, the world of the Canaques, a people I knew well when I lived in Vanuatu in the Pacific and Europe, Le Creusot where I have lived for a few years.
However contrary to the 19th century colonialism, which aimed at establishing the new settlers' way of life and their values in the colonized country, here it is the other way round. A Canaque, Sam Set happens to land in the Old Europe. He looks on things in a way that changes them and he mixes the old and the new world. It is no longer Prospero's magic but Caliban's innocence which gets the better of reality.
How the work of art was born .

I thought about this project in the art gallery in Le Creusot. From the architecture of the ancien chapel originated that vision : during a ritual celebration, the Gaul Jump, sort of bungee jumping, Sam Set the Canaque jumps into empty space and lands into a new dimension, a foreign world which he observes with amazement. Little by little, his look changes reality.

Landing on Place Schneider, Sam Set sees the steeple of Saint Laurent’s church and he decides to reach the top of that tower. He gazes throughout the town from north to south, east to west. The paintings show what Sam Set sees : real sceneries or dreamlike sceneries entertwine so that the rivers flow where there should be streets, the colours become brighter, as if they were lit by projectors and acquire a new violence. Sam Set sees through his eyes but also through the filter of his past, his culture, his feelings. His eye recreates reality.
This wandering through the town in the space-time zone parallels the visitor’s wandering through the art gallery in Le Creusot.
When the visitor enters the circular space of the gallery, he sees paintings everywhere on the walls, on the ceiling, the place does not look like a closed in space but gives the impression of an open larger space.

A second gallery, second circle, surrounds the first one. In that second gallery, we see mirrors on the left and big size portraits. I chose to magnify those faces, those looks by using large frames and by duplicating the faces thanks to the mirrors.
The visitor is caught in by those faces, those looks, those humain questionings, he can't stay indifferent. Those faces imply we have to cope with alterity. They imply that it is difficult to see the other people and at the same time to keep one’s integrity.
They reflect humanity : the others being so different from us and yet so much alike. They show man’s puzzlement in the ephemeral and poignant voyage which is life.

Eliane Quattrone.

© All of the images on this website are copyrighted original artworks by their author and are protected by international copyright law. No materials in this gallery may be reproduced, copied, downloaded, or used in any form without written permission of the contemporary artist Aldéhy.