Exhibitions
BACK'J'ai fermé les yeux', brings together the works of Lea de Cacqueray, John Fou, Alex Foxton, Cyrielle Gulacsy, Julien Heintz, Mari Katayama, Lucien Murat, Laurent Proux, Louis Verret and Jeanne Vicerial.
Curated by Lucien Murat.
Using the metaphor of a love separation, the exhibition 'J'ai fermé les yeux' questions the disappearance of an empathy for the Living.
We are immersed in the intimacy of a couple that is no more; Gaia, through a letter addressed to humanity, seeks to understand, with all the despair of one who has been betrayed, the reasons for their breakup.
By thus evoking the all-too-familiar drama of love, the exhibition touches on our relationship with Gaia, this formidable living and self-regulating system to which we are intimately connected.
"To you who once lived here,
I closed my eyes to see nothing but your ruins, to watch the walls weep their tears of stone.
Here begins my wandering in the frightful banality of the breakup that frees and tears me from my loneliness as a builder. See this temple, once erected in the name of love.
All the stones delicately piled up to raise the altar before which my knees never ceased to bend and my back to stoop, now allow daylight to pierce through, open to the winds of dereliction.
The sun, immutable, sings the death knell of what will be no more: its rays pierce the rock, covering your temple with incandescent wounds.
Its luminous rays penetrate the air through the cracked ceiling, revealing a myriad of particles, like suspended memories slowly falling, seeking in a final effort to cling to some reason to live.
Our whispers and laughter, our caresses and embraces, our breaths and silences lie here. Annihilated, in what is now nothing but a mausoleum of inert matter. Your laughing eyes, once companions of joy and mischief, turned away from me, revealing your true nature, insatiable for a deadly knowledge.
With the proud attitude of one who knows, you dissect matter. You order its atoms with the cold rigor of a scientist dissecting each note of a score, thinking to uncover the mysteries of a symphony.
Ah, you claim to know me? But to stop at the anatomical truth of my being is to deny all the poetic truth that animates it.
Listen to the secret harmony, see its chords and interconnections that bind each note in the greatest silence. Is it not in this invisible part that love operates?
Day after day, you ceased to see me, to listen to me, to feel me. To better hurt me, you made me a stranger but without ever dying, I too fell silent.
For a long time, I kept deep within me the unspoken hope that you would suffer from my loss. But no, not you.
Yes, you, the grave robber who leaves to your vile hands the task of digging into my entrails with picks and shovels. More blows struck, more holes dug, and more lands ravaged in the name of modernity. While your eyes challenge the sky, always defying farther, always higher, the God you have placed there on the path of your progress. Ah, progress, your original sin, virtue with which you drape yourself to disguise your greed, this vain thirst to tame everything you touch.
Abandoning my hand, fleeing my caresses, you reach out to that ethereal void, condemning your whole being to disappearance. See, your perpetual flight towards the chimera of a future better than a present already dead and lost. Each of your actions, like blind verdicts, denies the reality of your existence.
Go, slowly, beyond the sky. Embrace the darkness of that lifeless void.
Yes, go, plunge into the abyss of your pride, lost in the clutter of your infallible techniques. Cruel distancing of the fool who, ignorant of the unity of the World, decides to extract himself from Life.
But before the evening comes, listen one last time to the call of our sleepless nights, where our intertwined hearts beat in unison, under the weight of the sky building your home. Remember the arms of the cosmos, where our symbiotic dreams belong to no one. Eternal partners made of blood or sap.
So, look at me, Gaia, frozen in full light, and when at dawn you turn to dust, without losing memory, I will open my eyes wide."
Text: Lucien Murat
Curated by Lucien Murat.
Using the metaphor of a love separation, the exhibition 'J'ai fermé les yeux' questions the disappearance of an empathy for the Living.
We are immersed in the intimacy of a couple that is no more; Gaia, through a letter addressed to humanity, seeks to understand, with all the despair of one who has been betrayed, the reasons for their breakup.
By thus evoking the all-too-familiar drama of love, the exhibition touches on our relationship with Gaia, this formidable living and self-regulating system to which we are intimately connected.
"To you who once lived here,
I closed my eyes to see nothing but your ruins, to watch the walls weep their tears of stone.
Here begins my wandering in the frightful banality of the breakup that frees and tears me from my loneliness as a builder. See this temple, once erected in the name of love.
All the stones delicately piled up to raise the altar before which my knees never ceased to bend and my back to stoop, now allow daylight to pierce through, open to the winds of dereliction.
The sun, immutable, sings the death knell of what will be no more: its rays pierce the rock, covering your temple with incandescent wounds.
Its luminous rays penetrate the air through the cracked ceiling, revealing a myriad of particles, like suspended memories slowly falling, seeking in a final effort to cling to some reason to live.
Our whispers and laughter, our caresses and embraces, our breaths and silences lie here. Annihilated, in what is now nothing but a mausoleum of inert matter. Your laughing eyes, once companions of joy and mischief, turned away from me, revealing your true nature, insatiable for a deadly knowledge.
With the proud attitude of one who knows, you dissect matter. You order its atoms with the cold rigor of a scientist dissecting each note of a score, thinking to uncover the mysteries of a symphony.
Ah, you claim to know me? But to stop at the anatomical truth of my being is to deny all the poetic truth that animates it.
Listen to the secret harmony, see its chords and interconnections that bind each note in the greatest silence. Is it not in this invisible part that love operates?
Day after day, you ceased to see me, to listen to me, to feel me. To better hurt me, you made me a stranger but without ever dying, I too fell silent.
For a long time, I kept deep within me the unspoken hope that you would suffer from my loss. But no, not you.
Yes, you, the grave robber who leaves to your vile hands the task of digging into my entrails with picks and shovels. More blows struck, more holes dug, and more lands ravaged in the name of modernity. While your eyes challenge the sky, always defying farther, always higher, the God you have placed there on the path of your progress. Ah, progress, your original sin, virtue with which you drape yourself to disguise your greed, this vain thirst to tame everything you touch.
Abandoning my hand, fleeing my caresses, you reach out to that ethereal void, condemning your whole being to disappearance. See, your perpetual flight towards the chimera of a future better than a present already dead and lost. Each of your actions, like blind verdicts, denies the reality of your existence.
Go, slowly, beyond the sky. Embrace the darkness of that lifeless void.
Yes, go, plunge into the abyss of your pride, lost in the clutter of your infallible techniques. Cruel distancing of the fool who, ignorant of the unity of the World, decides to extract himself from Life.
But before the evening comes, listen one last time to the call of our sleepless nights, where our intertwined hearts beat in unison, under the weight of the sky building your home. Remember the arms of the cosmos, where our symbiotic dreams belong to no one. Eternal partners made of blood or sap.
So, look at me, Gaia, frozen in full light, and when at dawn you turn to dust, without losing memory, I will open my eyes wide."
Text: Lucien Murat
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