In bringing together offerings by Jo-Anne Balcaen and Dominique Pétrin this autumn, CLARK once again creates a constructive and stimulating dialogue between the artists exhibiting in the large and small galleries. While the aesthetics of the installations Sound Ideas (2011) by Balcaen and Pompeii MMXII (2011) by Pétrin are opposed on nearly every level – notably the ways in which the visual reduction of the former comparatively amplifies the chromatic saturation of the second – both works draw from a common source: a fascination with the idea, the concept of music. |
POMPEII MMXII
A different – more laden – installation awaits us in the small gallery, which has been transformed into a work of total art by Dominique Pétrin. She has drawn directly from the history of ornament; motifs becoming part of the silk-screened paper glued directly on the wall. These support the framed works – other collages formed of silk-screens whose subjects, animals and shells, are identifiable. The set-up operates simultaneously as an ephemeral work and an interior decoration showroom, though guided – certainly – by an unusual idea of what constitutes “good taste.” Here, decoration is active; it takes up the whole space. Aggressive, violent, it competes with the work, which becomes part of a larger whole. Silent, the installation nonetheless evokes adjectives related to sound when one tries to describe it. This may be because Pétrin always inspires herself by playing music while she works; music whose energy she translates visually so it seems to inhabit the space. Garish colours, the juxtaposition of geometric and angular forms, the repetition of stripes, lines and dots in distinct bands on the walls all create a rhythm in the space, dizzying the senses now over-stimulated by optical tricks and chromatic vibrations. The result is noisy, cacophonous, and yet regular in its orderly arrangement, which gives the gaze a chance to assimilate the overload of stimuli.
Before the intellect, it is the body that’s affected upon entering the room. The artist targets it, seeks to throw it off balance and invade it, certain that it cannot remain indifferent to the immersive work’s visual assault. Like music, which enters the body, this project envelopes the viewer. The impact is physical first, and only afterwards can the process of decoding, reading the symbols, the visual associations begin. Both Greek and Egyptian ornamentation – grandiose lost civilizations – and performers now transformed into flashy theatrical figures, like Liberace and Amanda Lear, are part of what went into making the framed collages. They are sources of inspiration that call back to a paroxysmal moment; they are decadent, a kind of luxuriance pushed to its limits, announcing the fall yet to come. This attraction to the limit, the ultimate point of some situation, is also reflected in the installation’s ambition, which required the production of more than 3,000 silk-screened sheets. More architectural than her earlier works, notably Panthéon Pétro (2009) and Bermuda Triangùla (2010), in which the arrangement of patterns was more suggestive of wallpaper friezes, Pompeii MMXII (2011) gives Pétrin the opportunity to explore trompe-l’oeil. The decorative space thus gains in illusory depth with its arches and columns evoking churches and princely palaces; I’m thinking here of the Prince of Monaco’s residence in which we find an abundance of fictional marble and other simulacra of luxurious materials. While the framed collages were created to be self-sufficient and survive the dismantling of the décor, we are left with the feeling that they will not act in quite the same way. They will quiet down in the process, perhaps losing a bit of their bite. Where then does the work end and the décor, the stage-setting, the superfluous, begin? |
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