FLASH BACKS — JULY/AUGUST 2010

"Is there a pool at your chalet?" — Lausanne
Léonore Easton, June 2010

Gilles Furtwängler’s exhibition at the Espace Doll unfolds to the terms of Noble Silence and Candour Grandeur. Two rooms which respond to each other.

A series of drawings, aligned side by side and all the same size, facing each other. For his models, Gilles takes apparently banal, everyday objects, whose fragility emerges from the stroke of his pencil. There is something slightly irregular about their form, which only adds to their appeal. A sense of familiarity towards that comb, that sieve or that fork, which we’ve already used, and which it’s our duty to protect. Candour.

Accentuating their fragile appearance, the bare drawings are attached to the wall itself, without frames, The mural’s two candid green frames, however, genuinely exacerbate this fragility. Precisely following the shape of the walls of this first room, they reach a height of four metres. And the objects suddenly appear as if swallowed by the immensity of this white space. Grandeur.

Candour-Grandeur is the title of a poem, which is to be found in the second room. A slideshow of stolen words, since Gilles himself is a word thief. Derrida, referring to Artaud, talked of parole souflée1, words which have never been authentic but have in the past always uttered by others, voiced by a prompter who knows them into the hollow of our ear. Gilles seizes them by force, complies and assembles them, only to freeze them in a ray of light and an incessant circular movement. The poem unfolds: the pages are turned at the speed of the slides which follow one another in their imposed rhythm. Silence.

The words progress beneath three masts on which yellow and pale violet cushions are hanging. Touched with colour, sparkling and profound, directing your gaze towards the poetic text. The cushions themselves are free of words or symbols, refusing to exhibit signs of any kind, except a form of innocence. Noble.

On each side, colours which frame and draw your attention to words and objects stolen from everyday life. Colours focus on the lines, black on white. On the objects which we recognize, on the words which we’re able to read. And exactly the opposite.

On each side, colours which distract and divert from the target. Leaving your eyes to follow the green frames to the top of the room, where they get lost in the white. This line – and the irregularity of its brushstrokes, pushing towards the interior – doesn’t frame the drawings so much as encircle the wall, and it ends up by encircling us, too. In the same manner, the colour of the cushions attracts us; in a moment of inattention, we quickly lose the thread of the text. We cannot go backwards, the loop must be completed and nothing suggests that there will be any escape this time. Reflections.

But the frame here isn’t always what you think it is. If the green line allows an escape – and the colourful, round cushions likewise – the positioning of the drawings, on the contrary, imposes linear rigour, while the slide projector dictates the marching order. The flags then relax while the text hammers away with its caustic humour. However, some of the words which appear do sometimes display an unlikely gentleness. Nagging pains.

And so it is. It’s impossible to let yourself be completely taken in by the poetry of the words, the brightness of the colours or the irony of the drawings since you’re continually called to order by the rhythms, materials and symbolism of the subject matter. For what Gilles Furtwängler seeks in his drawings, writings, sculptures, videos and murals “is to walk on the razor’s edge which joins or separates stupidity from thought.”

He subtly forces us to follow him across this razor’s edge in a state of tension, our minds alert and critical.

I set off from the exhibition having selected a fork with some bent prongs.

And finally, if you really want to know, no, there isn’t a pool at my chalet!

1 J. Derrida, La parole soufflée in L’écriture et la difference (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967).

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Prochainement à l'Espace Doll :
VIRGINIE LAGANIERE, du 16 septembre au 16 octobre 2010, vernissage le jeudi 16 septembre dès 18h30

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