AMÉLIE GUÉRIN | UNE SALADE DANS UN CONTEXTE SUPÉRIEUR

AMÉLIE GUÉRIN | UNE SALADE DANS UN CONTEXTE SUPÉRIEUR

Room 1

Amélie Guérin

UNE SALADE DANS UN CONTEXTE SUPÉRIEUR

EXHIBITION /
FEBRUARY 26 TO APRIL 4, 2009

Amélie Guérin's installations have the particularity of escaping predefined forms or formulas: 
they are developed from inside a given space, that of the gallery or any other presentation space. It is, therefore, not about creating a work in order to arrange it in space, but about “making use of the space so that it works on the work”. In this sense the presentation of Une Salade Dans Un Contexte Supérieur is the result of the artist's prior occupation of the place. In a hybrid staging in which various materials, objects, plants, volumes are heaped one on top of the other, fitted into each other or isolated form the lot, the installation proposes a fragmented structure, which coupled with the stark neon light, opens a breach that enables the artist to question the finality of the work itself. There where the work, in its constitutive plurality, appears to reveal a coherence, Guérin raises the question of the “work in its inception”, of the “failed work”, the interstice between the moment of creation and that of a possible completion. Uncertainty is pushed to its limits and reveals an “in between” where the variables (colours, meanings, errors, reliefs) and the functions (to please, dare, disappoint, repeat, innovate) are multiplied

The sentence “It's not right but it's okay”, which is displayed on wall posters, underscores this uncertainty. Taken from a Whitney Houston song the expression also refers to popular culture, notably through a presentation that is reminiscent of the unbridled visual displays and invasive nature of advertisement. These inscriptions, which subscribe to an attitude that is either very optimistic or politely submissive, may evoke the difficulty of finding one's bearings in today's world. Nevertheless, for the artist such extensions have nothing to do with an engaged discourse, just as the reuse of various objects put forth here, as well as in most of her projects, is not an ecologically motivated gesture. Instead these materials function as so many ingredients that come together to create suspended environments.

AS, trans PdB