haunt
haunt, 2024, installations-sculptures
Solo Exhibition at Hua International, Berlin, DE
Images: © Joe Clark
hapdomain, 2023-2024, copper, steel, polyamide thread,150 x 70 cm (300 x 70 including steel hanging)
touch and release, 2023 - 2024, glass, watercolor, water, 45 x 25 cm
A long ribbon of scenes-, 2023, engraving on fine art Fabricano paper (285 g) with black ink, framed in flamed sycamore, 74 x 56 cm, framed
I am not afraid anymore/Just to say hello and goodbye/There is more in life than rush/These blue molecule always make me cry, 2024, tulle, paraffin, glasses, steel, variable dimensions
Hold our ghosts- to my grand mother, 2023 - 2024, steel or brass, fabric, sewing button, variable dimensions
With the generous support:
Institut Français
Les Archives de la critique d'art
La Ville de Rennes
La Région Bretagne
La Direction Générale des Affaires Culturelles de Bretagne
ENG
Hua International is pleased to announce Haunt, Fanny Gicquel’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. "Haunting,” the cultural theorist Mark Fisher writes, “happens when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time.” In her first exhibition without live performers, Gicquel translates the sensation of haunting into shifting layers of presence that inhabit constellations of ambiguous objects and sculptural scenarios. Working with form and color to elicit a psychological and emotional effect, Gicquel mines the “affordance” or potential activation latent in objects, personal memory, and institutional history.
The exhibition emerged from a collaborative research process the artist undertook during a residency at the Archives of Art Criticism (ACA) in Rennes, France. Fascinated by the interplay between official, professional, and personal documents related to the lives and work of French art critics, Gicquel was drawn to the archive’s materiality and the different regimes of presence that the ephemera contained therein oscillate between. “On the surface of the documents, a hidden and more intimate life is revealed, such as drawings in the margins, coffee stains on a document, or a taped train or cinema ticket,” Gicquel explains, “All these aspects create an intimacy and a certain connection with the archive.” Her encounters with these documents sparked broader reflections on archives, memory, ghosts, and their way of haunting space or objects. To create the work hapdomain—a neologism formed from the ancient Greek haptikós "capable of touching" and abdomen—Gicquel transferred selections of texts and images from the ACA onto copper plates through a photogravure process. Cut, deformed, stitched, and recombined, the resulting suspended copper sculpture evokes the organic, enveloping silhouette of a chrysalis in which different temporalities, geographies, and biographies intersect. The fleeting, ethereal nature of thought and intimacy is reflected in the haptic quality of the material: Due to its reflective and luminous nature, copper allows the engraved images on its surface to appear and disappear with the viewers’ movements. The motifs in the engravings A long ribbon of scenes, the title of which refers to Virginia Woolf’s A Moment of Being, were selected in collaboration with a group of designers, theorists, historians, and critics. An intimate, fluid form of “database” emerges that constructs an associative, non-linear narrative. A series of water-filled glass sculptures entitled touch and release bear the imprint of different hand positions like mimicking a caress or grasping an object. Both content and container, these vessels bearing the ghostlike traces of many hands, thereby evoking the collective process of building, maintaining, and exploring archives while also gesturing towards the notion of hydrofeminism, which in its emphasis on radical collectivity contends that we are all connected to the watery planet through a fluid continuum. The steel and brass armatures in the sculptural series Hold our ghosts - to my grandmother take their dimensions from the size of standard moving boxes, which the artist then strikes, stretches, and squeezes to imbue these regulated forms with emotion. Each sculpture becomes a kind of “living archive” not only through their physical manipulation, but also the inclusion of small buttons culled from one of Gicquel’s personal collections: delicate objects accumulated over generations by family members as they moved through different contexts in Italy, Algeria, and France, which were bequeathed to the artist by her grandmother. These wall-mounted objects, which draw upon the languages of both painting and sculpture, suggest the gesture of opening and closing, protecting, or discovering our secrets and stories.
- Jesi Khadivi
breathing with heels, walking with eyes
breathing with heels, walking with eyes, 2023, installations-sculptures-performances
4 hours
Solo Exhibition at Temple Bar Galery+Studio, Dublin, IR
Curated by Michael Hill
Performers: Sarah Joan K, Ania Kudriavtseva, Makrià Midèn, Ellen Reidy
Images: © Louis Haugh
how far is it? how far is it now?, 2023, cast aluminium, sand, rock, paraffin, dimensions variable
body of work for aquaspace, 2023, glass, dimensions variable
a stone or a wave, 2023, glass 15 x 44 x 45 cm,14 x 44 x 44 cm, 14 x 39 x 40 cm, 18 x 36 x 38 cm
prendre corps, 2023, steel, paraffin, foam, fabric, 30 x 30 x 120 cm, 35 x 35 x 165 cm
rest to the bones, 2023, foam, fabric, zip, 5 x 12 x 40 cm
mouth was thinking about eyes, 2023, steel, glass, steel length: 200, 235 cm, glass: 21 x 21 x 47 cm
des astres, des outils, de la musique le jour comme la nuit, 2023, brass, 5 x 20 x 20 cm, 28 x 9 x 9 cm
sharing skysummer, 2023, cotton, thread, 98 x 150, 70 x 250 cm, 98 x 270 cm
ENG
Text by Michael Hill, Programme Curator, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
Fanny Gicquel’s tactile and adaptive sculptural environments refer to intimate and natural forms. Their components are dependent on one another, providing resting points where groups of objects and materials harmonise and perform. The serpentine aluminium stripes that delineate the gallery floor share likenesses with the curvature of a body in repose or an undulating shoreline. This alignment between discreet bodily outlines and formations in nature allows Gicquel to explore the touching point between the animate and the inanimate, tracing a moving and transitory landscape.
Language meets materiality throughout the exhibition. Its title pairs two references by David Le Breton, a sociologist and anthropologist who writes about walking as a metaphysical experience. In his book, Walking Life: A Quiet Art of Happiness, Breton discusses ‘breathing with heels’, a Taoist method of consciously engaging with the earth beneath our feet, its energy and connectivity; ‘walking with eyes’ is an expression by Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969), an explorer and spiritualist who advocated moving through the world by intuition, without following a predetermined path. Comparably, Gicquel’s approach to the installation of the exhibition was determined by bringing together many disparate components and materials, and responsively composing their relationships in the gallery itself. For her this transitional approach is an amalgamation between studio and exhibition spaces, and the flow of work is circulatory.
A terrain of aluminium tracks and drifting sandbanks opens up several circuitous routes through the exhibition. how far is it? how far is it now? (2023) takes its title from the opening lines of ‘Getting There' by Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965), and also recalls a child’s excited anticipation on a day trip. The guiding pathways are made by casting directly from the beach itself, Penmarch in the artist’s home region of Bretagne. Gicquel inscribed marks in the sand, at times with intent and others more aimlessly, to create spirals, trails and accents that were then filled with molten aluminium, incorporating traces of sand, stones, and flaws from reactions between the liquid metal with saltwater in the ground.
Visitors are encouraged to mimic Gicquel’s beach ‘drifting’ and make decisions about their movements, attentiveness and pace in the room, echoing the motions of four performers who periodically inhabit the exhibition with a combination of individual and collective actions. The integration of choreographed and improvised activations, imagined by the artist and then carefully, yet playfully, enacted by the performers, create a curious sense of self-awareness. Their subtle gestures, which activate Gicquel’s installation, include contact, rearrangement and interaction with each other and elemental substances like water, air, vapour, and reflected light.
During her first visit to Temple Bar last year, Gicquel observed the passersby outside the gallery, and how this constant presence plays an intrinsic role in the exhibitions. Her observations of hurried purposeful movement in the street prompted a response to slow down and move without intention of getting somewhere, within the exhibition. This sensation is integrated into her work through the symbolism of a meeting point, or place of connection. The large glass windows are a visual and light-porous screen connecting inside and outside, just as the beach is the meeting point between land and sea, constituted by the merging of solid and liquid material. Gicquel utilises the window of the gallery as a site of seeing and being seen. The harmony between stillness and movement is also a feature of her installations, particularly resonant in the slow and meditative performances, where gentle concentration prompts close relationships between objects and bodies.
The setting of the beach is bound to leisurely mindfulness, activated by the relaxing sounds of rolling waves and seabirds. It is expansive by its own nature, and Gicquel plays with the associations of horizontal space between land and sea, and the actions that typically take place there, such as lying down and sunbathing. sharing skysummer (2023), a grouping of blue and purple fabric banners, hangs at floor level in the gallery creating a horizon. It also resembles a windbreaker that offers protection from the elements and the privacy of enclosure. The banners signify potential for reconfiguration and can be folded, stretched and repositioned like picnic blankets, beach towels or semaphore flags. Gicquel hints at the possibility of a ‘living painting’ that could shift the backdrop of the exhibition, leaving the installation open to change, through the actions of the performers.
Throughout the installation, the channels of sand indicate moments to pause beside glass rock pools, filled with water (a stone or a wave, 2023), fragments of mirror and blown-glass implements (body of work for aquaspace, 2023). The surrounding areas also draw attention to particles of shell, weathered glass, and hand-formed, coloured paraffin balls; shapes that coalesce the natural and imaginary. During the installation, we reflected on Virginia Woolf’s short story ‘Solid Objects’ (1920). One of its many entwined threads is the protagonist’s increasing obsession with the discovery of material fragments (glass worn smooth by the waves, a broken shard of ceramic), however his inquisitiveness and childlike wonder about the sand, and its interaction with water, as well as the “half-conscious reverie” in which he increasingly experiences the world, is particularly resonant with Gicquel’s exhibition.*
As Woolf describes the ‘unmistakable vitality’ of figures walking on a deserted beach, Gicquel links the interior and exterior of the gallery, with works that exaggerate and playfully respond to the activity outside and their distance within the protected gallery setting. mouth was thinking about eyes (2023), is a trio of suspended glass cones, that reference loudhailers, telescopes, or listening devices that are a direct response to the vibrant and chaotic Temple Bar street, which also create the potential for personal sensory experiences like listening to the sound of the sea inside a shell. Gicquel’s use of sand throughout the exhibition avoids a definitive configuration for materials due to its indeterminate positioning, while also acknowledging the links to care and restoration with the beach and sea swimming in the Dublin cityscape.
Three larger sculptures that take the form of disembodied limbs are placed on the floor, or against the wall, their title, prendre corps, meaning ‘to take shape’, draws parallels between the hand-wrought fabrication of the work, its visualisation as sculptural body parts, and activation by performers. Gicquel has considered the implied vulnerability of the objects’ exposed knees, elbows and heels by placing upholstered cushions (rest to the bones, 2023) between the skeletal joints and the hard surfaces of the building; another point of connection, which has been considered with care and intimacy.
- “Looked at again and again half consciously by a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it”. ‘Solid Objects’ was brought to our attention by artist Niamh O’Malley, who shared an article by Margaret Iverson on the work of artists Becky Beasley and Lucy Skaer.
- The Prix du Frac Bretagne–Art Norac aims to support Bretagne-based artists through annual partnerships with international organisations, which realise a solo exhibition for the awarded artist. The shortlisted artists 2022 were Reda Boussella, Clémence Estève, Fanny Gicquel, Valérian Goalec.
FR
Texte par Michael Hill, Commissaire d'exposition à Temple Bar Gallery + Studios - ce texte a été traduit de l’anglais par Laura Touitou
Les environnements sculpturaux tactiles et évolutifs de Fanny Gicquel font écho à des formes intimes et naturelles. Leurs composants sont dépendants les uns des autres, offrant des points de repos là où des groupes sculpturaux s'harmonisent et interagissent. Les bandes d'aluminium sinueuses qui délimitent le sol de la galerie s’apparentent à la courbure d'un corps au repos ou à l'ondulation d'un rivage. Cet alignement entre les contours discrets d’un corps et les formations naturelles permet à Gicquel d'explorer le point de contact entre l'animé et l'inanimé, traçant un paysage mouvant et transitoire.
Le langage rencontre la matérialité tout au long de l'exposition. Son titre associe deux références de David Le Breton, sociologue et anthropologue qui écrit sur la marche en tant qu'expérience métaphysique. Dans son livre Marcher la vie : Un art tranquille du bonheur, Le Breton évoque l’acte de « respirer par les talons », une méthode taoïste qui consiste à interagir consciemment avec la terre sous nos pieds, son énergie et sa connectivité. « Marcher avec les yeux » est une expression d'Alexandra David-Néel (1868 - 1969), une exploratrice et spiritualiste qui préconisait de se déplacer dans le monde en se laissant guider par l'intuition, sans suivre un chemin prédéfini. De la même manière, l'approche de Gicquel pour l'installation de l'exposition a été déterminée par la réunion de nombreux éléments et matériaux disparates, et en composant de manière réactive leurs liens au sein de la galerie. Pour elle, cette approche transitoire fait se fusionner l'atelier et les espaces d'exposition, résultant en un flux de travail circulatoire.
Des surfaces composées de bandes en aluminium et de bancs de sable à la dérive ouvrent plusieurs parcours sinueux à travers l'exposition. how far is it ? how far is it now ? (2023) tire son titre des premières lignes du poème « Getting There » de Sylvia Plath, dans le recueil Ariel (1965), et rappelle également la manière dont les enfants peuvent exprimer leur impatience et leur anticipation pendant un trajet. Les parcours guidés sont réalisés par moulage directement sur la plage de Penmarch, dans la région d'origine de l'artiste, la Bretagne. Gicquel a inscrit des marques dans le sable en marchant, parfois avec intention, parfois sans but précis, pour créer des spirales, des sentiers et des lignes qui ont ensuite été remplis d'aluminium fondu, incorporant des traces de sable, des pierres et des défauts dus aux réactions entre le métal liquide et l'eau salée.
Les personnes qui visitent l’exposition sont encouragées à imiter la « dérive » sur la plage entreprise par Gicquel, et à décider de leurs mouvements, de leur attention et de leur rythme dans la pièce, en écho aux mouvements de quatre performeur.euses qui habitent périodiquement l'exposition avec une combinaison d'actions individuelles et collectives. L'intégration d'activations chorégraphiées et improvisées, imaginées par l'artiste puis exécutées, avec soin mais de manière ludique, par les performeur.euses, crée un curieux sentiment de conscience de soi. Leurs gestes subtils, qui activent l'installation de Gicquel, incluent le contact, la réorganisation et l'interaction entre eux et avec des substances élémentaires telles que l'eau, l'air, la vapeur et la lumière réfléchie.
Lors de sa première visite à Temple Bar l'année dernière, Gicquel a observé les passants à l'extérieur de la galerie et la façon dont cette présence constante joue un rôle à part entière dans les expositions. L’allure pressée et déterminée des gens qui marchent dans la rue l'a incitée à ralentir et à se déplacer sans intention d'aller quelque part, à l'intérieur de l'exposition. Cette sensation fait partie intégrante de son travail à travers le symbolisme d'un point de rencontre ou d'un lieu de contact. Les grandes fenêtres en verre constituent un écran visuel et poreux à la lumière qui relie l'intérieur à l'extérieur, tout comme la plage est le point de rencontre entre la terre et la mer, constitué par la fusion de matériaux solides et liquides. Gicquel utilise la fenêtre de la galerie comme un espace où l'on voit et où l'on est vu. L'harmonie entre l'immobilité et le mouvement est également une caractéristique de ses installations, qui résonne particulièrement dans les performances lentes et méditatives, où une douce concentration suscite des relations étroites entre les objets et les corps.
L’environnement de la plage suscite une forme de tranquillité d'esprit, décuplée par les sons relaxants du roulement des vagues et des oiseaux marins. Vaste par nature, la plage permet à Gicquel de jouer avec les associations d'espace horizontal entre la terre et la mer, et les actions qui s'y déroulent, comme s'allonger et prendre un bain de soleil. sharing skysummer (2023), un ensemble de bannières en tissu bleu et violet, est suspendu au niveau du sol dans la galerie, créant ainsi un horizon. Cela ressemble également à un coupe-vent qui offre une protection contre les éléments ainsi qu’un espace intime et clos. Les bannières ont le potentiel d’être reconfigurées : elles peuvent être pliées, étirées et repositionnées comme des couvertures de pique-nique, des serviettes de plage ou des drapeaux sémaphores. Gicquel évoque la possibilité d'une « peinture vivante » qui pourrait déplacer l’arrière-plan de l'exposition, laissant l'installation ouverte au changement, grâce aux actions des performeur.euses.
Tout au long de l'installation, les sillons de sable incitent à s’arrêter à côté de récipients en verre, remplis d'eau (a stone or a wave, 2023), de fragments de miroir et d'éléments en verre soufflé (body of work for aquaspace, 2023). Les zones environnantes attirent également l'attention sur des particules de coquillages, du verre dépoli et des très petites sculptures en paraffine, façonnées à la main en forme de pierres ; des formes qui fusionnent le naturel et l'imaginaire. Pendant l'installation, notre réflexion s’est portée sur la nouvelle de Virginia Woolf « Solid Objects » (1920). L'un des nombreux fils conducteurs qui traversent le texte est l'obsession croissante du protagoniste pour la découverte de fragments matériels (verre dépoli par les vagues, tesson de céramique brisé), mais sa curiosité et son émerveillement enfantin pour le sable et son interaction avec l'eau, ainsi que la « rêverie à demi consciente » dans laquelle il fait de plus en plus l'expérience du monde, trouvent une résonance particulière avec l'exposition de Gicquel*.
Comme Woolf décrivant l’« incontestable vitalité » des personnages marchant sur une plage déserte, Gicquel relie l'intérieur et l'extérieur de la galerie, avec des œuvres qui exagèrent et répondent de manière ludique à l'activité extérieure et à leur distance dans le cadre protégé de la galerie. mouth was thinking about eyes (2023) est un trio de cônes de verre suspendus qui font référence à des porte-voix, des télescopes, ou des dispositifs d'écoute qui sont une réponse directe à la rue animée et chaotique de Temple Bar. Ils créent également un potentiel d'expériences sensorielles personnelles, comme écouter le son de la mer à l'intérieur d'un coquillage. L'utilisation du sable par Gicquel tout au long de l'exposition évite une configuration définitive des matériaux en raison de son positionnement indéterminé, tout en reconnaissant les liens avec les notions de soin et de préservation associées à la plage et à la baignade en mer dans le paysage urbain de Dublin.
Trois sculptures de plus grande taille prenant la forme de membres désincarnés sont placées sur le sol ou contre le mur. Leur titre, prendre corps, établit un parallèle entre la fabrication à la main de l'œuvre, sa visualisation en tant que parties du corps sculpturales, et son activation par des performeur.euses. Gicquel a pris en compte la vulnérabilité implicite des genoux, des coudes et des talons en plaçant des coussins rembourrés (rest to the bones, 2023) entre les articulations squelettiques et les surfaces dures du bâtiment ; un autre point de contact, qui a été réfléchi dans une démarche de soin et d’intimité.
- « Contemplé sans cesse, semi-consciemment, par un cerveau qui pense à autre chose, un objet, n’importe lequel, se mêle si profondément à la trame de la pensée, qu’il perd sa véritable forme et qu’il se recompose un peu différemment sous une forme idéale qui hante l’esprit aux moments les plus inattendus.1 » Solid Objects a été porté à notre attention par l'artiste Niamh O'Malley, qui nous a fait part d'un article de Margaret Iverson sur le travail des artistes Becky Beasley et Lucy Skaer.
1 NdT: Le présent extrait tiré de la nouvelle “Objets Massifs” de Virginia Woolf est traduit de l’anglais par Hélène Bokanowski dans le recueil de nouvelles La Mort de la Phalène. © 1968, Éditions du Seuil pour la traduction française.
- Le Prix du Frac Bretagne - Art Norac a pour objectif de soutenir les artistes basés en Bretagne par le biais de partenariats annuels avec des structures internationales, qui réalisent une exposition individuelle avec l'artiste lauréat. Les artistes sélectionné.e.s en 2022 étaient Reda Boussella, Clémence Estève, Fanny Gicquel, Valérian Goalec.
laloreleï
laloreleï, 2022, installations-sculptures-performances, variable duration
Showed in Art Norac-FRAC Bretagne exhibition-prize, Rennes-FR
Curated by Elena Cardin
Performer: Ramo Jalil
Images: © Aurélien Mole © Malo Legrand
sensitive surface: thermotactile, 2022, steel, thermosensitive black painting 200 cm x 80 cm
the little lost planets, 2022, paraffine, organic and found elements (flowers, hair, cigarette, cigarette butt, chain, beads...), diameter 6 cm
des astres, des outils, de la musique le jour comme la nuit, 2022, brass, mirror, dimensions variable
a painting_yellow, 2022 food film, paint, 150 cm x 100 cm
a landscape_green, 2022 food film, paint, 150 cm x 100 cm
a slippery poem_brown, 2022 food film, paint, 150 cm x 100 cm
a flying sculpture_beige, 2022 food film, paint, 150 cm x 100 cm
until they disappear, 2022 glass, pigments, volcanic stone, sand, make-up powder, approx. 7 cm
l'âme lézardée, 2022, foam, velvet, cotton thread, stainless steel, stones, used ball, capsule, 100 cm x 16 cm x 6 cm
et mon corps est un asile ouvert toute la nuit, 2022, glass, stainless steel, liquid, fragrance, dimensions variable
ENG
The lizards by Elena Cardin
(Excerpt)Without following a thematic axis, the exhibition that brings together the 4 artists nominated for the Frac Bretagne Prize attempts to highlight postures, temperaments and perspectives on the world that mobilise particular modes of attention. Like the lizards that suddenly appear only to disappear, the artists gathered here are interested in transitory states, in moments of transition from one perspective to another, in the body in its impermanence and fragility. Some of the works have an ephemeral life as they develop in relation to the exhibition space and then disappear or persist in another form in another place.
(...)
Fanny Gicquel creates mobile and delicate environments within which the viewer's body is invited to move. Her installations appear as microcosms in which the different elements maintain mutually interdependent relationships. Placed on the floor or suspended from the ceiling, Fanny Gicquel's objects, made of glass, metal or fabric, invite the viewer to touch them and aspire to create a form of intimacy with them. Her works thus exist in two phases, that of contemplation and that of manipulation, allowing her to explore the border between the animate and the inanimate. This also manifests itself in the experimentation with changing materials such as paraffin and heat-sensitive paint that escape a definitive form, evoking the impermanence and multiplicity of the things that surround us.
The installations are always accompanied by activation scenarios devised by the artist and played out by performers. They interact with the objects in a discreet, or sometimes almost imperceptible way, to the point of creating images close to the tableau vivant, which invites slowing down and observation.
For his new installation at the Frac Bretagne, the artist draws the outline of a moving and transitory landscape, inhabited by sculptures that enter into a direct relationship with the architecture of the place that receives them. Harmoniously arranged in the space, the works create a new syntax allowing the different materials to communicate subtly with each other and to dialogue with the viewer's body.
(excerpt) Critical text about the exhibition Les lézards[The lizards] by Pierre Ruault (2022)
Published on Revue 02
The tour then continues with laloreleï, a poetic and sensitive installation by Frac prize-winning artist Fanny Gicquel. It is a composite environment that extends over the floor, walls and ceiling of the gallery. Four monochrome paintings in yellow, beige, green and brown are laid out on the floor in the centre of the space, some in a chromatic superimposition effect. On one of them are three very fine, small sculptures made from rings and geometric shapes in gold-plated brass: The Stars, tools of music by day and by night. At the edge of a window in the gallery, on the floor and against the wall, we look at an alignment of small paraffin spheres. These are the little lost planets, unique objects that contain organic elements that the artist has collected, such as strands of hair, pearls and flowers. There is also the organic-looking glass piece, Et mon corps est un asile ouvert toute la nuit, which is suspended from the ceiling and contains mysterious yellowish liquids at its ends.
The strength of this installation lies in the fact that it is conceived as a plastic and relational syntax between each object, which maintains links of mutual interdependence and dialogue with the bodies it encounters. Forced to stoop, to look up, to walk around, the spectator is invited to experience his own bodily presence. This installation is also supported by an activation scenario. A performer slowly executes a variety of choreographic gestures, interacting with certain objects, which fall within the field of attention to the other. By spraying hot water with a sponge, the performer creates ephemeral forms of white drips on the sculpture Sensitive surface: thermotactile, an imposing black parallelepipedic monolith made from heat-sensitive paint. In her work, Fanny emphasises the power of time insofar as it continually changes the forms of things and beings, making it impossible to speak of a fixed identity.
FR
Les lézards par Elena Cardin (2022)
(extrait)Sans suivre un axe thématique, l’exposition qui regroupe les 4 artistes nommé.e.s au Prix du Frac Bretagne tente de mettre en exergue des postures, des tempéraments et des perspectives sur le monde qui mobilisent des régimes d’attention particuliers. A l’image des lézards qui surgissent soudainement pour disparaître aussitôt, les artistes ici réuni.e.s s’intéressent à des états transitoires, à des moments de passage d’une perspective à une autre, au corps dans son impermanence et sa fragilité. Certaines œuvres ont une vie éphémère puisqu’elles se développent en relation au lieu d’exposition pour ensuite disparaître ou persister sous une autre forme dans un autre lieu.
(...)
Fanny Gicquel élabore des environnements mobiles et délicats à l’intérieur desquels le corps du spectateur est invité à se déplacer. Ses installations apparaissent comme des microcosmes où les différents éléments entretiennent des relations d'interdépendance mutuelle. Posés à même le sol ou suspendus au plafond, les objets de Fanny Gicquel, faits de verre, métal ou tissu, invitent au toucher et aspirent à créer une forme d’intimité avec le spectateur. Ses œuvres existent ainsi en deux temps, celui de la contemplation et celui de la manipulation, lui permettant d’explorer la frontière entre l’animé et l’inanimé. Cela se manifeste aussi dans l’expérimentation avec des matériaux changeants comme la paraffine et la peinture thermosensible qui échappent à une forme définitive, évoquant l'impermanence et la multiplicité des choses qui nous entourent. Les installations sont toujours accompagnées par des scénarios d’activation imaginés par l’artiste et joués par des performeurs. Ielles interagissent avec les objets de façon discrète, ou parfois presque imperceptible, jusqu’à créer des images proches du tableau vivant qui invite au ralentissement et à l'observation. Pour sa nouvelle installation au Frac Bretagne, l’artiste dessine le contour d’un paysage mouvant et transitoire, habité par des sculptures qui entrent en relation directe avec l’architecture du lieu qui les reçoit. Agencées harmonieusement dans l'espace, les oeuvres créent une nouvelle syntaxe permettant aux différents matériaux de communiquer subtilement entre eux et de dialoguer avec le corps du spectateur.
(Extrait)Texte critique à propos de l'exposition Les lézards par Pierre Ruault(2022)
Publié dans Revue 02
Le parcours se poursuit ensuite avec laloreleï, une installation poétique et sensible de l’artiste lauréate du prix du Frac, Fanny Gicquel. C’est un environnement composite qui se prolonge sur le sol, les murs et le plafond de la galerie. Quatre peintures monochromes de couleurs jaune, beige, vert et marron sont disposées à même le sol au centre de l’espace, certaines dans un effet de superposition chromatique. Sur l’une d’entre elles, sont positionnées trois sculptures très fines, de petite taille, composées à partir d’anneaux et de formes géométriques en laiton doré : Les astres, des outils de la musique le jour comme la nuit. Au bord d’une fenêtre de la galerie, posé à même le sol et contre le mur, nous regardons un alignement de petites sphères en paraffine. Ce sont les little lost planets, des objets uniques qui recèlent des éléments organiques que l’artiste a collectés, comme des mèches de cheveux, des perles ou encore des fleurs. On découvre également cette pièce en verre à l’allure organique, Et mon corps est un asile ouvert toute la nuit, qui se retrouve suspendue depuis le plafond, et qui contient de mystérieux liquides jaunâtres à ses extrémités. La force de cette installation est d’être pensée comme une syntaxe plastique et relationnelle entre chaque objet qui entretient des liens d’interdépendance mutuelle et dialogue avec les corps qu’il rencontre. Contraint à s’abaisser, à lever le regard, à contourner, le spectateur est invité à expérimenter sa propre présence corporelle. Cette installation est également portée par un scénario d’activation. Un performeur exécute avec lenteur une diversité de gestes chorégraphiques, interagissant avec certains objets, qui relèvent du champ de l’attention portée à l’autre. En projetant de l’eau chaude avec une éponge, le performeur fait apparaitre des formes éphémères de coulures blanches sur la sculpture Sensitive surface: thermotactile, un imposant monolithe parallélépipédique de couleur noire composé à partir d’une peinture thermosensible. Fanny souligne dans son œuvre la puissance du temps dans la mesure où il change continuellement les formes des choses et des êtres, d’où l’impossibilité de parler d’une identité fixe.
PRESS
Revue 02 Text by Pierre Ruault
OuestFrance Article by Agnes Le Morvan
Le mensuel de Rennes Interview with Julien Joly-N° 152
now, and then
now, and then, 2022, exhibition-performance, 3 heures
Solo exhibition at Hua International Gallery, Beijing-CH
Co-choregrapher: Mengfan Wang
Performers: Shuyi Liao, Dan Qian, and Sihan Cai, Ryotaro Harada
Music composition: Delawhere
Images: Haiyang
Video: Zhang Shengbin
The titles refer to several concepts: the elements (Chinese), the body, time and space.
mù
jīn
huǒ
shuǐ
tǔ
air
battre les ailes d’un sentiment tiède
contre ta langue
a glass belly
le montre derrière soi
an insecure hand
live as close as possible to each other
plain pleasure
Elle rentre la tête dans sa cage (H.G)
a split, again
the skin from others/one arm
the skin from others/ one arm
the skin from others/the half
the skin from others/the dreamer
the skin from others/the quiet
the skin from others/the walker
the little lost planets
UTC +2 (night)
UTC +8 (day)
light from the sea-tears of mermaids
four hours (M)
game
infinite score
a painting_yellow
a slow dance_black
a landscape_green
a slippery poem_brown
a space _pink
a flying sculpture_beige
a sticky skin-silver
Becoming a hut
no place to come
in a pocket
open home
passing in its head
the straps n°1-2
what your hand is telling me
imagination exercise
sensitive surface: thermotactile
sensitive surface: parrafin
sensitive surface: soap
ENG
Exhibition text by Jesi Khadivi (2022)
Fanny Gicquel primarily works in sculpture and installation, typically incorporating her artworks into non-hierarchal choreographed performances that address ephemerality, fragility, and the inherent plurality of the self. A kind of porosity between the self and the other, interior and exterior, human and non-human has come to define Gicquel’s work, which imagines the world less as a space of discrete, partitioned entities than as a dynamic constellation of interminglings, crossovers, and interferences. In now, and then, Gicquel’s second exhibition with Hua International and her first in China, she presents a series of new sculptural works and performances amidst a soundscape composed by the musician Delawhere, which was composed in close dialogue and resonance with Gicquel’s sculptures. Sourced from recordings he made in public space, the sounds are transformed through processes of slowing down, layering, and multiplying to create an autonomous environment in perfect harmony with Gicquel’s sculptures.
Inspired by the Japanese concepts of Ma and Wabi-Sabi—which respectively gesture towards the distance between things and moments and the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete—Gicquel creates constellations of intimate objects and gestures in the exhibition space that exist in a dynamic state of becoming. The art historian Michael Lucken describes the concept of Ma as “an interval that is both moving and sacred between two signs.” This fluctuating synergy between objects and moments plays out in Gicquel’s flexible spatial choreographies: many of the objects included in the exhibition have several ways of being presented and means of relating to one another. They unfold in variations of performative and choreographic gestures that imply an inhabitation and domestication of space such as making, undoing, placing, stretching, or folding. Made from mutable materials like paraffin, soap, and thermosensitive paint, the series Sensitive Surfaces appears monochromatic and monolithic on first glance yet the gestures made by performers leave traces that last for an instant or linger forever. A series of small-scale sculptures that subjectively respond to the Wuxing elements are worn and activated exclusively on the hand through a related set of gestures—“choreographic miniatures”—that relate to the element that inspired the sculpture. The constant flow of movement and flux carries into the objects that the subtle performances unfold with and through: thermotactile painting functions as a portal between worlds, words appear and disappear in multi-lingual anagrams and palindromes, glass vessels are activated by human breath and smoke. As Gicquel herself notes of her works, “they are all active, changing, escaping a definitive form to highlight the impermanence of things around us and to testify to the fragility and multiplicity of the world.” Jesi Khadivi
FR
Texte d'exposition par Jesi Khadivi (2022)
Fanny Gicquel travaille principalement la sculpture et l’installation, incorporant généralement ses œuvres dans des performances chorégraphiées non hiérarchisées qui traitent de l’éphémérité, de la fragilité et de la pluralité inhérente du soi. Une sorte de porosité entre le soi et l’autre, l’intérieur et l’extérieur, l’humain et le non-humain est venue définir le travail de Fanny, qui imagine le monde moins comme un espace d’entités discrètes et cloisonnées que comme une constellation dynamique de mélanges, de croisements et d’interférences. Dans now, and then, la deuxième exposition de Gicquel avec Hua International et sa première en Chine, elle présente une série de nouvelles œuvres sculpturales et performatives au milieu d’un paysage sonore qui a été composé par le musicien Delawhere en dialogue et en résonance étroits avec les sculptures de Fanny. Tirés d’enregistrements effectués dans l’espace public, les sons sont transformés par des processus de ralentissement, de superposition et de multiplication pour créer un environnement autonome en parfaite harmonie avec les installations de Fanny.
Inspiré par les concepts japonais de Ma et de Wabi-Sabi, qui soulignent respectivement la distance entre les choses et les moments et la beauté de l’imparfait, de l’impermanent ou de l’incomplet, Fanny crée des constellations d’objets et de gestes intimes dans l’espace d’exposition qui existent dans un état dynamique de devenir. L’historien de l’art Michael Lucken décrit le concept de Ma comme «un intervalle à la fois mouvant et sacré entre deux signes». Cette synergie fluctuante entre les objets et les moments se retrouve dans les chorégraphies spatiales et flexibles de Fanny : de nombreux objets de l’exposition ont plusieurs façons d’être présentés et d’entrer en relation les uns avec les autres. Ils se déploient dans des variations de gestes performatifs et chorégraphiques qui impliquent une habitation et une domestication de l’espace, comme faire, défaire, placer, étirer ou plier. Réalisée à partir de matériaux mutables tels que la paraffine, le savon et la peinture thermosensible, la série Sensitive Surfaces semble monochrome et monolithique à première vue, mais les gestes effectués par les artistes laissent des traces qui durent un instant ou s’éternisent. Une série de sculptures de petite taille qui répondent subjectivement aux éléments de Wuxing sont portées et activées exclusivement sur la main par un ensemble de gestes connexes - des « miniatures chorégraphiques « - qui se rapportent à l’élément qui a inspiré la sculpture. Le flux constant de mouvements et de rythmes s’étend aux objets avec lesquels et à travers lesquels les performances subtiles se déroulent : la peinture thermotactile fonctionne comme un portail entre les mondes, les mots apparaissent et disparaissent dans des anagrammes et des palindromes multilingues, les sculptures en verre sont activés par le souffle humain et la fumée. Comme Fanny le note elle-même à propos de ses œuvres, «elles sont toutes actives, changeantes, échappant à une forme définitive pour souligner l’impermanence des choses qui nous entourent et témoigner de la multiplicité du monde.»
VIDEO AND SOUND
music composition:Delawhere- now, and then
video documentation
PRESS
Figaro Madame
Mousse Magasine
yyyymmdd
Contemporary art Daily
Comfort Magazine - Chinese edition
Art ba-ba
Art Forum
Spike Art Magazine
Art viewer
près de la cataracte
Près de la cataracte [close to the cataract], 2022, installation-performance, 30 mn
Showed in ARCO, Madrid-SP
Performers: Léa Balvay and Fanny Gicquel
Images: © Dan Outon © Jimena Tercero
the door between them, 2022, steel, thermo-sensitive painting, 80x200 cm/each
an insecure hand, 2022, steel, paraffin, glasses, blue jeans, approx. 180 x 100 cm
I said cage, not room, 2022, glasses, steel, paraffin, approx. 200 x 100 cm
plain pleasure, 2022, steel, paraffin, glasses, 31 x 19,5 x 8 cm
to pass in his head, 2022, aluminium, flowers pressed, 30 cm diameter/each
what your hands are telling me, 2022, parafin, aluminium, 16 x 6 x 4 cm
imagination exercise, 2022, aluminium, approx. 16 x 10 cm/each
the skins from other, 2022, steel, painting, printed cotton fabric, blue jean, variable dimension
To hell with the sisters, 2020-2022, face and hand choregraphy, 4 mn
ENG
Exhibition text by Jesi Khadivi (2022)
French artist Fanny Gicquel primarily works in sculpture and installation, typically incorporating her artworks into non-hierarchal choreographed performances that concern ideas related to the body and space. With sculptures and performances that address ephemerality, fragility, and the inherent plurality of the self, Gicquel’s practice imagines the world less as a space of discrete, partitioned entities than as a dynamic constellation of interminglings, crossovers, and interferences. A kind of porosity between the self and the other, interior and exterior, human and non-human has come to define Gicquel’s work and her work marks a new chapter in her exploration of these concerns. Fanny Gicquel’s new installation Close to the cataract translates the literary technique of the “cut-up” into a performative context, resulting in a choreography that dispenses with linearity in favor of a fluid multi-temporality. The title and content of Gicquel’s performance is loosely inspired by Jane Bowles’ short story “Camp Cataract,” in which the American writer uses a tale of two dysfunctional sisters to chart a broader exploration of human relations caught at intimate and political crossroads. Unfolding amidst a dynamic constellation of sculptures, two women encounter one another in Gicquel’s performance. Their relationship is unclear. Are they kin or shadow-selves? The women seamlessly move from one activity and gesture to another. Like an endless, microscopically shifting loop, each repetition introduces slight changes into the womens’ game of perpetual motion: a flight from the dread of stasis. The constant flow of movement and flux carries into the objects that performance unfolds with and through: a thermotactile painting functions as a portal between worlds, words appear and disappear in multi-lingual anagrams and palindromes, glass vessels nestled amidst steel sculptural ensembles are activated by human breath and smoke. As Gicquel herself notes, “they are all active, changing, escaping a definitive form to highlight the impermanence of things around us and to testify to the fragility of the world.
Close to the catarct by Henri Guette (2022)
Published on YACI/Jeune critique d’art
There is always an impression of fragility with glass. Perhaps because it is the materialization of a breath and we know how much a breath can break. A frozen breath whose contours would be words, whose breakings always have an air of threat. With glass, we make pretty things like little animals, menageries that gather dust on the shelves when we don’t know how to love them. With glass, we sink into the breathing of another. Fanny Gicquel, with glass, gives a second form to our bodies, the double of a heart with Plain Pleasure, or that of a rib cage with I said cage no room. In the light, these glass ducts shine and it is as if they underline an absence.
Two sisters or two performers, depending on the situation, smoke or vape. They don’t speak to each other and perhaps understand each other on the side. The installation Close to the Cataract is designed for two people, who are complicit enough to seek each other’s company and yet so absorbed in themselves that they seem to miss each other; this is also what brings them together with two heroines of the British novelist Jane Bowles: Harriet and Sadie, sisters in Camp Cataract (1949).
One inhales, the other exhales. It’s the same smoke and you can see from the condensation and the drops of water how close they are. Live as close as possible to each other. They are two glass flutes that carry an inaudible music, perhaps because we are not in tune, in this same time that is here as if extended. It is like two runners passing the baton to each other, because they cannot hold hands. The second, the third in a family, sometimes by a few minutes, often by several years: what to do with one’s own place? We are on the verge of a rupture, the cataract and the sound of the fall should engulf everything. A wet explosion followed by a haggard silence. This is what lies between the lines, what overflows from the words: the unspoken nature of literature, dear to Bowles and to his contemporary, the American playwright Tennessee Williams. Dear perhaps to all those who know what can be lost by talking too much.
We cling to the gestures as if we were trying to communicate. One inhales and the other exhales her electronic cigarette. She pulls her head into her cage; inside there is still something that does not sit well, perhaps an anxiety. All in tension, the score Au diable les sœurs begins with an air of playing with hands, four hands that seek each other out and rebuke each other until they attack each other’s faces. Mimicry is said to be a strategy of seduction. It is said that reproducing the gestures of the other is a way of seeking approval. It is said that mirroring increases empathy, but anyone who has been confronted with someone who imitates them too much knows that irritation is not far off. We” don’t hold on to much. Boundaries are always being recomposed and you have to be prepared to see the blow go off, even in your hands. The space between the hands does not only indicate the resistance of the air, but also everything that one has to invest in a performance; the interpretative capacity.
They don’t speak to each other and perhaps understand each other on the side. In what is being played out, small gestures divert large rivers and variations reveal a traumatic event. Jane Bowles’ heroines are presented to us as “dysfunctional” and perhaps it is indeed of rehashing that the installation, the camp, speaks to us. What would we have done differently if we had known? Could we read the events differently? What temporality informs our judgments and assessments? The story does not make a decision and leaves the reader with an open ending. The installation itself plays with suspense and the objects gently placed on the floor give a sense of an environment. The fragile hooks put the walls and the floor in tension, all that we believe to be given.
Who will have the last word of the two young women? In Fanny Gicquel’s Invention Exercise, they compose and recompose words from the same set of letters. What could be a game of anagrams becomes, however, a confrontation about language through the intensity of the protagonists. They do not speak, but the letters they rearrange more and more violently, clash and find a sonic materiality. It is a game that forces the possibilities of language; words are formed before thought, the image of words even before their meaning. It is not possible through language to reach the thought of the other, which exceeds, overflows; the contours of the same words change according to whether they are of one or the other. Once again, we touch on the unspoken, and on what in Jane Bowles or Tennessee Williams makes literature.
In the multiple interactions that the objects provoke, there is the idea of collaboration. With To Pass in his Head, it is necessary to work hand in hand to carry the sculpted aluminium disc and, as the title suggests, to empathise. The disc is passed from one face to the other in a circular rotation, in a revolution that induces passage like a ritual that would mark one’s readiness to open up or receive the other. To put oneself in the head of the other as to put oneself in The skins from others with the skin of the others implies to think in one’s own place. What your hand are telling me is part of this same movement by extracting the lines of the hand and materialising them in aluminium. Lines of life which, like jacks, are as much a bet on the future as the ambition to enter the life of the other through the surface. The different protocols that Fanny Gicquel thinks of lead us to manifest a link, to make explicit the intention behind a simple gesture and in the journey towards the other to go to the borders of empathy and violence.
The hand that caresses can also be the one that strikes. The glass fists of An Insecure Hand undoubtedly contribute to the ambiguity of the whole installation. Without fingers, this counter-form, which acts like a glove, makes the person wearing it clumsy. A hand without fingers, two hands without fingers, is like having two left hands that do not allow one to sign, to communicate through the sign. A boxer would say that it is the most direct access to the other, through the blow. The touch of the fists is blunt, it suffocates at the same time as it embraces. The fight does not prevent a form of tenderness, the ambiguity of a feeling in the body to body. The person who wears them carries the difficulty of expressing himself without hurting the other person. Is it a prosthesis or a handicap? Glass makes what has no outline shine. It has no consciousness but manifests and amplifies the impulses that run through us. There is always an impression of fragility with glass. Even more so when you hang up the gloves, when you tie them delicately to a rack.
Where does a waterfall stop? The loop of the installation thus acts as if it constantly allows for new rereadings, an opportunity to see what is tied up without ever really untying itself and to go to the limits of a text, to its doors, to its breaths. On the two large heat-sensitive plates of The Door between them, the sisters place flowers as in a herbarium. A way of gathering a moment, of sketching out another language perhaps, and of preserving a memory in a certain way. Slowly, Fanny Gicquel sponges hot water on these surfaces. As the water trickles down, the steam and fog render the shiny surface opaque, giving a breath of air to the odourless flowers. We no longer see the reflection but simply the presence. Here we are, for a moment, back to life, near the cataract.
One inhales, the other exhales.
FR
Texte d'exposition par Jesi Khadivi (2022)
L'artiste française Fanny Gicquel travaille principalement la sculpture et l'installation, incorporant généralement ses œuvres dans des performances chorégraphiées non hiérarchisées qui abordent des idées liées au corps et à l'espace. Avec des sculptures et des performances qui traitent de l'éphémérité, de la fragilité et de la pluralité inhérente au moi, la pratique de Fanny imagine le monde moins comme un espace d'entités discrètes et cloisonnées que comme une constellation dynamique de mélanges, de croisements et d'interférences. Une sorte de porosité entre le soi et l'autre, l'intérieur et l'extérieur, l'humain et le non-humain est venue définir son travail. La nouvelle installation de Fanny Gicquel, Près de la cataracte, traduit la technique littéraire du "cut-up" dans un contexte performatif, résultant en une chorégraphie qui se passe de la linéarité en faveur d'une multitemporalité fluide. Le titre et le contenu de la performance sont librement inspirés de la nouvelle de Jane Bowles "Camp Cataract", dans laquelle l'écrivain américain utilise l'histoire de deux sœurs dysfonctionnelles pour explorer plus largement les relations humaines prises dans des carrefours intimes et politiques. Se déroulant au milieu d'une constellation dynamique de sculptures, deux femmes se rencontrent dans la performance. Leur relation n'est pas claire. Sont-elles des parentes ou des ombres ? Les femmes passent sans transition d'une activité et d'un geste à l'autre. Comme une boucle sans fin, microscopique, chaque répétition introduit de légers changements dans le jeu des femmes en mouvement perpétuel : une fuite de la peur de la stase. Le flux constant de mouvement et de flux s'étend aux objets avec lesquels et à travers lesquels la performance se déroule : une peinture thermotactile fonctionne comme un portail entre les mondes, des mots apparaissent et disparaissent dans des anagrammes et des palindromes multilingues, des récipients en verre nichés au milieu d'ensembles sculpturaux en acier sont activés par la respiration et la fumée humaines. Comme le note Fanny elle-même, "Les œuvres sont actives, changeantes, échappant à une forme définitive pour souligner l'impermanence des choses qui nous entourent, mais aussi leur potentielle transformation et fragilité."
Près de la cataracte par Henri Guette (2022)
Publié sur YACI/Jeune critique d’art
On a toujours une impression de fragilité avec le verre. Peut-être parce que c’est la matérialisation d’un souffle et que l’on sait tout ce qu’un souffle a de cassant. Une respiration figée dont les contours seraient des mots, dont les bris gardent toujours un air de menace. Avec le verre, on fait des jolies choses comme des petits animaux, des ménageries qui prennent la poussière sur les étagères quand on ne sait pas les aimer. Avec le verre, on se coule dans la respiration d’un autre. Fanny Gicquel, avec le verre donne une seconde forme à nos corps, le double d’un cœur avec Plain Pleasure, ou de celui d’une cage thoracique avec I said cage no room. A la lumière, ces conduits de verre brillent et c’est comme s’ils soulignaient une absence. Deux sœurs ou deux performeuses, c’est selon, fument ou vapotent. Elles ne se parlent pas et se comprennent peut-être à côté. L’installation Près de la cataracte est conçue pour deux personnes, assez complices pour se chercher compagnie et néanmoins à ce point absorbée par elles-mêmes qu’elles semblent se rater ; c’est aussi ce qui les rapprochent de deux héroïnes de Jane Bowles : Harriet et Sadie, soeurs dans Camp Catatact.
L’une inspire, l’autre expire. C’est la même fumée et l’on voit, par la condensation et les gouttes d’eau à quelle point elles se tiennent proches. Live as close as possible to each other. Ce sont deux flûtes en verre qui portent une musique inaudible, peut-être parce que nous ne sommes pas au diapason, dans ce même temps qui est ici comme étendu. Ce seraient deux coureuses qui se passeraient le témoin, faute de pouvoir se tenir la main. On reste ainsi un peu hagarde quand il s’agit de succéder à quelqu’un. La deuxième, la troisième dans une famille, parfois de quelques minutes, souvent de plusieurs années : que faire de sa propre place ? On est au bord de la rupture, la cataracte et le bruit de la chute devrait tout engloutir. Une déflagration mouillée suivie d’un silence hagard. C’est donc cela qui est entre les lignes, ce qui déborde des mots: finalement ce non-dit de la littérature cher à Bowles comme à Tennessee Williams. Cher peut-être à tous ceux qui savent ce qu’il y a à perdre à trop parler.
On se raccroche aux gestes comme on chercherait à communiquer. L’une inspire et l’autre expire sa cigarette électronique. Elle rentre la tête dans sa cage ; il reste à l’intérieur quelque chose qui cohabite mal, peut-être une anxiété. Toute en tension, la partition Au diable les sœurs commence sur un air de jeu de mains, quatres mains qui se cherchent et se rabrouent jusqu’à s’en prendre aux visages. On dit que le mimétisme est une stratégie de séduction. On dit que le fait de reproduire les gestes de l’autre est une façon de chercher l’approbation. On dit que l’exercice du miroir augmente l’empathie mais toutes celles qui se sont retrouvées face à quelqu’un qui les imitait de façon trop appuyée savent que l’énervement n’est pas loin.”On” ne tient pas à grand-chose. Les limites sont toujours en voie de recomposition et jusque dans les mains il faut être prête à voir le coup partir. L’espace qu’il y a entre les mains ne dit pas seulement la résistance de l’air mais aussi tout ce que l’on est amené à investir dans une performance ; la capacité interprétative.
Elles ne se parlent pas et se comprennent peut-être à côté. Dans ce qui se joue, se déjoue, les petits gestes détournent de grandes rivières et les variations révèlent un événement traumatique. Les héroïnes de Jane Bowles nous sont présentées comme “dysfonctionnelles” et peut-être que c’est bien de ressassement dont nous parle l’installation, le campement. Qu’aurions nous fait différemment si nous avions su ? Pourrions-nous lire les événements autrement ? Quelle temporalité nous éclaire dans nos jugements et appréciations ? La nouvelle ne tranche pas et laisse le lecteur face à une fin ouverte. L’installation elle-même joue du suspens et les objets posés avec douceur, déposés délicatement au sol donnent à sentir un environnement. Les accroches, fragiles, mettent en tension les murs et le sol, tout ce que nous croyons être donnés.
Qui aura donc le dernier mot des deux jeunes femmes ? Dans l’Exercice d’imagination que propose Fanny Gicquel, elles composent et recomposent des mots à partir d’un même ensemble de lettres. Ce qui pourrait être un jeu d’anagrammes devient pourtant par l’intensité que les protagonistes y mettent un affrontement qui porte sur le langage. Elles ne parlent pas mais les lettres qu’elles réagencent de plus en plus violemment, s’entrechoquent et trouvent une matérialité sonore. C’est un jeu qui force les possibilités du langage ; les mots se forment avant la pensée, l’image des mots avant même leur sens. Il n’est pas possible au travers du langage d’atteindre la pensée de l’autre qui dépasse, déborde ; aux mêmes mots, les contours changent selon qu’ils soient de l’une ou de l’autre. On touche une fois encore au non-dit, et à ce qui chez Jane Bowles ou Tennessee Williams fait littérature.
Dans les multiples interactions que suscitent les objets, il y a l’idée d’une collaboration. Avec Passer dans sa tête, il est nécessaire de travailler main dans la main pour porter le disque d’aluminium sculpté et comme l’indique le titre de faire preuve d’empathie. On passe ce disque d’un visage à l’autre dans un mouvement de rotation circulaire, dans une révolution qui induit le passage comme un rituel qui marquerait que l’on est prêt à s’ouvrir ou à recevoir l’autre. Se mettre dans la tête de l’autre comme se mettre dans la peau de l’autre avec La peau des autres implique de penser à sa propre place. What your hand are telling me s’inscrit dans ce même mouvement en allant extraire les lignes de la main et en les matérialisant par de l’aluminium. Lignes de vie qui à la manière des osselets sont autant un pari sur l’avenir que l’ambition d’entrer dans la vie de l’autre par la surface. Les différents protocoles que pense Fanny Gicquel nous amènent à manifester un lien, à expliciter l’intention derrière un geste simple et dans le voyage vers l’autre à aller au confins de l’empathie et de la violence.
La main qui caresse peut aussi être celle qui frappe. Les poings de verre d’Une Main mal assurée participent sans doute à l'ambiguïté de toute l’installation. Sans doigt, cette contre forme qui agit comme un gant, rend maladroit la personne qui la porte. Une main sans doigts, deux mains sans doigts c’est comme avoir deux mains gauches qui ne permettent pas de signer, de communiquer par le signe. Un boxeur dirait que c’est l’accès le plus direct à l’autre, par le coup. Le toucher des poings est contondant, il étouffe en même temps qu’il étreint. La lutte n’empêche pas une forme de tendresse, l’ambiguité d’un sentiment dans le corps à corps. La personne qui les porte, porte la difficulté de s’exprimer sans se blesser en faisant mal à l’autre. Est-ce une prothèse ou un handicap ? Le verre rend brillant ce qui n’a pas de contour. Il n’a pas de conscience mais manifeste et amplifie les élans qui nous traversent. On a toujours une impression de fragilité avec le verre. Plus encore quand on raccroche les gants, quand on les noue délicatement à un portant.
Où s’arrête une chute d’eau ? La boucle de l’installation agit ainsi comme si elles permettaient sans cesse de nouvelles relectures, occasion de voir ce qui se noue sans jamais se dénouer vraiment et d’aller aux limites d’un texte, à ses portes, des respirations. Sur les deux grandes plaques termosensibles de The Door between them, les soeurs posent des fleurs comme dans un herbier. Manière de cueillir un moment, d’esquisser un autre langage peut-être et de conserver d’une certaine manière un souvenir. Lentement, Fanny Gicquel dépose à l’éponge de l’eau chaude sur ces surfaces. Alors que l’eau ruisselle, la vapeur et la buée rend opaque la surface brillante, restitue un souffle aux fleurs sans odeur. On ne voit plus le reflet mais simplement la présence. Nous voici le temps d’un moment rendu à la vie, près de la cataracte.
L’une inspire, l’autre expire.
PRESS
Jeune Critique d’art_Yaci International - Text by Henri Guette
Art viewer - special feature Arco Madrid 2022
do you feel the same
do you feel the same, 2021, exhibition-performance, 45 mn
Solo exhibition at Hua International Gallery, Berlin-DE
Co-choregrapher: Alice Heyward
Performers: Alice Heyward, Thanos Frydas,Mickey Mahar, Luísa Saraiva,Leah Marojević andLeah Katz.
Music composition: Delawhere
Images: © Timo Ohler, © Robert Rieger
Video:Agustin Farias
the tears of what we lost, 202, steel, white painting, biological sponge,gouache, bottle of water, variable dimension
do you remember when you started to forget, 202, paraffin, dirt, variable dimension
to catch our colored shadows n°1-4, 2020-2021, cotton, brass, variable dimension
these black lines that hide the truth from us n°1-2, 2018-2021, steel, thermic paper rolls, variable dimension
the straps n°1-4, 2021, linen, parafin, hair, cigarette butt, talc powder, 6m
abstraction of an ordinary space n°1 -4, 2020-2021, steel, aluminium, 202x140cm
fingers are like eyes, 2021, steel hole, talc powder , 16mm diameter | Edition of 25
ornament from your body:head/pelvis/shoulder, 2020-202, glass, rope, fabric, paraffin, hair, cigarette butt, adjustable dimensions
ENG
Exhibition text by Jesi Khadivi (2021)
Fanny Gicquel imagines the world less as a space of discrete, partitioned entities than as a dynamic constellation of interminglings, crossovers, and interferences. Conceived in close conversation with the choreographer Alice Heyward the exhibition-performance do you feel the same articulates a series of sculptural-performative constellations that take the form of three “corporalities”—machine body room/dream body room/memory body room—all of which differently foreground the primacy of isolation and connection, and the slippages between these states.
The philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy describes the body as limit, an unfolding, a place where things happen. “Bodies aren't some kind of fullness or filled space,” he writes, “they are open space, implying, in some sense, a space more properly spacious than spatial, what could also be called a place. Bodies are places of existence, and nothing exists without a place, a there, a ‘here,’ a ‘here is,’ for a ‘this.’” This border, the limit where the body takes place, as Nancy argues, appears in Gicquel’s work as a malleable zone that perpetually negotiates its edges or boundaries. What’s the relationship between your inside and outside? Do you ever dream of living in a house as big as your body? Do you think memory becomes blood in our bodies? Such questions emerge through an open-ended dialogue between performers as they carve abstract markings into large slabs of paraffin or break them down into smaller fragments in the memory body room. In the space of this cool, monochrome room, these collaboratively generated reflections draw upon a pool of memory that blurs the distinctions between individual and collective, intimate and generic. Interwoven, abstract textile forms dangle from two sets of curved brass armatures in the dream room/dream body. There is something vaguely corporeal about this delicate tangle of shapes, like skeins of deconstructed lounge wear that still retain some trace of the warmth of their wearer. In the machine room/machine body, suspended glass and fabric works surround four, open-frame steel sculptures that propose skeletal outlines of a domestic living space. The performers enact series of familiar, automatic-seeming gestures among these objects that nonetheless seem to have lost their referent: squatting, twisting, pressing, turning. This body-room, like the entire project, is a living organism, a space to be inhabited, continually re-configured through movement and touch. As Nancy writes, “the body makes room for existence.” The fleeting sculptural and gestural situations that unfold here question and reveal a porosity, an ambiguity between the intimate and the impersonal, interiority and exteriority, waking life and dreams to come to dwell in the space between what is hidden, what is shared, what is one’s own, and what is common.
FR
Texte d'exposition par Jesi Khadivi (2021)
Fanny Gicquel imagine le monde moins comme un espace d'entités discrètes et cloisonnées que comme une constellation dynamique d'entremêlements, de croisements et d'interférences. Conçue en étroite conversation avec la chorégraphe Alice Heyward, l'exposition-performance Do you feel the same articule une série de constellations sculpturales-performatives qui prennent la forme de trois «corporalités» - salle du corps de la machine / salle du corps des rêves / salle du corps de la mémoire - toutes mettent en avant différemment la primauté de l'isolement et de la connexion, et les glissements entre ces états.
Le philosophe Jean-Luc Nancy décrit le corps comme une limite, un déroulement, un lieu où les choses se passent. «Les corps ne sont pas une sorte de plénitude ou d'espace rempli», écrit-il, «ils sont un espace ouvert, impliquant, en un certain sens, un espace plus proprement spacieux que spatial, ce que l'on pourrait aussi appeler un lieu. Les corps sont des lieux d'existence, et rien n'existe sans un lieu, un là, un «ici», un «ici est», pour un «ceci». »Cette frontière, la limite où le corps prend place, comme le soutient Nancy, apparaît dans l'œuvre de Fanny Gicquel comme une zone malléable qui négocie perpétuellement ses bords ou ses limites. Quelle est la relation entre votre intérieur et votre extérieur? Avez-vous déjà rêvé de vivre dans une maison aussi grande que votre corps? Pensez-vous que la mémoire devient du sang dans notre corps? De telles questions émergent à travers un dialogue ouvert entre les interprètes alors qu'ils sculptent des marques abstraites dans de grandes plaques de paraffine ou les décomposent en fragments plus petits dans la salle du corps de la mémoire. Dans l'espace de cette pièce fraîche et monochrome, ces réflexions générées en collaboration puisent dans un bassin de mémoire qui brouille les distinctions entre individuel et collectif, intime et générique. Des formes textiles abstraites entrelacées pendent de deux ensembles d'armatures en laiton incurvées dans la salle de rêve / corps de rêve. Il y a quelque chose de vaguement corporel dans ce délicat enchevêtrement de formes, comme des écheveaux de vêtements de détente déconstruits qui conservent encore une trace de la chaleur de leur porteur. Dans la salle des machines / corps de la machine, des œuvres en verre et en tissu suspendus entourent quatre sculptures en acier à cadre ouvert qui proposent des contours squelettiques d'un espace de vie domestique. Les interprètes jouent des séries de gestes familiers et automatiques parmi ces objets qui semblent pourtant avoir perdu leur référent: s'accroupir, se tordre, presser, tourner. Cette salle du corps, comme l'ensemble du projet, est un organisme vivant, un espace à habiter, sans cesse reconfiguré par le mouvement et le toucher. Comme l'écrit Nancy, «le corps fait place à l'existence». Les situations sculpturales et gestuelles éphémères qui se déroulent ici interrogent et révèlent une porosité, une ambiguïté entre l'intime et l'impersonnel, l'intériorité et l'extériorité, la vie éveillée et le rêve pour venir habiter dans l'espace entre ce qui est caché, ce qui est partagé, ce qui est la sienne, et ce qui est commun.
PRESS
Moussemagazine
Des éclats
Des éclats, exhibition-performance, 2020, 45 mn
solo exhibition at Passerelle, Center for Contemporary Art, Brest-FR
Performers: Sarah Bellaiche, Tiphaine Dambrin, Naomie Daviaud, Juliette Fanget, Charlotte Gourdin, Nina Krawczyk, Anna Larvor, Martin Routhe, Robin Sarty, Tabea Von-Vivis
Pictures : © Aurélien Mole
Video: Documentation d’artiste Bretagne
Je veux partir avec vous, partout ou vous êtes allés , 2019-2020 [I want to go with you, wherever you have gone] acier, peinture
Le tissus de mes nerfs , 2019-2020 [The tissue of my nerves] métal, coton, encre
l’appel confus des eaux , 2019-2020 [the confused call of the waters] installation, acier, peinture, Plexiglas, miroir, papier, plâtre, résine, eau
Embrassant subitement tout l’horizon maritime , 2019-2020 [Suddenly embracing the entire maritime horizon] acier, peinture, feutrine
L’immensité avec vous , 2020 [The immensity with you] film, 9’06’’ Assistance technique : Auriane Allaire
ENG
Exhibition text by Loïc Le Gall (director Center for Contemporary art Passerelle) (2020)
The exhibition entitled «Des éclats»[Shards] fills two first-floor rooms in the art centre, combining installations, sculptures and video, and designed to form a whole. Fanny Gicquel wanted to respond to the ocean setting of Brest by taking inspiration from the work of poetry Ode Maritime (1915) by Fernando Pessoa, a Portuguese political writer of the early twentieth century. She has taken from this prose poetry a series of verses imagining the notions of departure and movement, such as «I want to go with you, wherever you have been».But the messages are coded using a technique that is particularly familiar to sailors: the semaphore alphabet, a means of communication using flags held at arm’s length to cipher the Roman alphabet. So the poetry extracts become ‘semaphore verses’ taking the form of sculptures, a film and performances given at predetermined times throughout the duration of the exhibition. Fanny Gicquel imagines the rooms in the Passerelle as a stage, unfurling nets like curtains in a theatre, colouring the walls to create scenery, and with metal sculptures used as props by the actors. With Des éclats, she questions the durability of the performance event and its survival in an exhibition, as much as the dimension of a coded language losing its meaning.
L’âme de fond by Anne-Lou Vicente (2020)
«In its simple, natural, primitive form, far from any aesthetic ambition and any metaphysics, poetry is a joy of the breath, the obvious happiness of breathing. The poetic breath, before being a metaphor, is a reality that one could find in the life of the poem if one wanted to follow the lessons of the aerial material imagination.»(1)
Romanticism has made a common place out of the landscape-state of mind, subject respectively to the variability of elements and feelings. (É) moved by the force of the waves, seascape and human soul undoubtedly share a certain uneasiness (2) and the same meaning, in (de) finite. More concretely, the sea and the body appear as living organisms traversed, animated by the air, an element whose poetic and cinematic essence and power must be emphasized.
These three entities of the body, the sea and the breath constitute the pillars of Fanny Gicquel’s exhibition presented at Passerelle in the form of an installation-video-performance entirely bathed in poetry. And for good reason, its main anchor point is none other than the poem Ode maritime signed Álvaro de Campos (1890-1935). This Glasgow-trained naval engineer is in a way the repository of the maritime impressions of one who knew how to handle the art of heteronymy like no one else: the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (3). Building a bridge between Lisbon and Brest, two port cities facing the open sea, the artist focused in particular on the first of three parts of this long prose poem in which the author, observing the Tagus which opens towards the oceanic horizon, rocked by the comings and goings of boats and the fertile imagination of departures and arrivals, delivers a sensory approach to the marine element.
Ten verses were extracted from it, the ambient presence of which in the exhibition turns out to be neither audible nor readable (4), but visible and sensitive through different mediums - video, sculpture and performance (5) - which distill the version. semaphoric. What could be more natural than a marine language to «translate» these lines with bluish reflections? Falling into the same obsolescence as semaphores, these observation posts of the French Navy overlooking seas and oceans, this coded language consisted of signals emitted by means of arms equipped with flags, each letter of the Latin alphabet corresponding to a position specific.
From this body language - and therefore, non-verbal - both chthonic and aerial (6), Fanny Gicquel has thus composed (7) an elementary choreography consisting of a series of minimalist gestures essentially articulated around the breath, interpreted by several students of the EESAB in Brest (8). By its binary movement and rhythm - inspiration / expiration -, breathing recalls the dual character of so many natural rituals (surf and tides, sunrise and sunset, day and night, etc.) at the same time as it summons, while incorporating it, the dialectic of the inside and the outside (9), like two communicating vessels.
Shot outdoors during the day on the Crozon peninsula, the film Immensity with you consists of a succession of still shots like so many living tableaux giving to see, immersed in nature, the community of performers secretly declaiming the verses. chosen from Maritime Ode, to handle and wear certain accessory objects - which we (re) find in the exhibition - which operate less as signs than as hyphens and points of contact between bodies and the landscape. We forget the reflex of sense to let ourselves be carried away by the sensuality of images, faces and gestures, the communicative energy of bodies and of nature which breathe in unison (10). It is the breath that speaks, that listens, flows and exudes beyond the space-time of the film itself. The slow and deep breathing that constitutes its soothing and hypnotic soundtrack gives its pulse to the exhibition (11) composed in a fragmentary, even indicative fashion. Slowly, piece by piece, shot by shot, sequence by sequence, unfolds the setting within which is replayed - and re-read - the poetic landscape, populated by «interactive» objects and bodies.
The lines arranged in the scenic space draw a free course, a multi-lane scenario, a diffracted visual narrative. In front of us, a cloudy horizon stretches out: the steel sculpture I want to leave with you, wherever you have been takes up and materializes the outline in semaphoric language of this same line of maritime Ode. As we approach it, we perceive on the white surface of the wall tiny bluish tears which “betray” the presence of a line of blue pigment hidden behind the metal line which reminds us that the horizon, sky and sea merge by infra-thin.
As slight as they are, the drips testify to a gesture, to an action whose thread can be traced: on the ground lies a sponge still wet with the water with which it has swelled, collected in the imprint of a hand having hollowed out the porous material of a block of plaster. Evoking a plant element as much as a rising / setting sun, a frail fan carved from a copper-colored Plexiglas used in the manufacture of boat portholes to protect from glare rises at eye level, forming a potential filter on the landscape-exhibition. Tied to the ground (earth) and to the ceiling (sky / air), a black mirror reflects by flattening the space and what (ow) that is (re) there (s): it operates here like a binder between the different spatio-temporal strata of the exhibition, both from the point of view of its construction and of its unfolding (12), at the same time that it appears as the key interface of a reflection on the notions of presence and representation (13). Freely resuming the knot technique used for fishing nets, The fabric of my nerves consists of two screen curtains whose undulating and vibrating meshes, far from enclosing us, act as a floating threshold. Passed on the other side, in front of a sand / flesh-colored wall, a white grid stands out as if drawn in space on which hang four felt flag sleeves in the colors of the Crozon peninsula, occasionally worn by the performers in the film and during the various activations of the performance during the exhibition (14).
Multiplying points of view and lines of flight like the senses and strata of reading, traversed back and forth by a common breath, “Des éclats” works by “rebound”, associating the materiality of the objects-works-bodies in the presence. their “fleeting impressions” (15) as if to better amplify their degree of anchoring in the present and the real, but also, and above all, the power of (retro) projection - and motion - imaginary and poetic. Available in multiple displacements, transformations and other spatial and temporal translations, bodies, elements, images, words, materials, objects, flows and (im) perceptible phenomena communicate silently with each other and come alive indefinitely according to their multiple correspondences.
(1) Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes, Essay on the imagination of movement, chap. XII “La déclamation muette”, Paris, Librairie José Corti, p. 271.
(2) In reference to the posthumous work of Fernando Pessoa (under the heteronym of Bernardo Soares), The Book of Tranquility. The first words of Jean-Christophe Bailly in L’Élargissement du poème (Paris, Christian Bourgois, 2015) refer to it, as well as to the landscape-state of soul. See p. 13: “Very early on, the lesson of German romanticism, entirely nourished by Schelling’s Naturphilosophy, was forgotten, and by the networking of all existences, which it illustrated by ricochets and echoes, s’ a bourgeois version of effusion is substituted, of which Lamartine’s famous question on ‘inanimate’ objects undoubtedly constitutes the culmination. «
(3) In Portuguese, “pessoa” means “person”. Read Iooss Filomena, “The heteronymy of Fernando Pessoa. No one and so many beings at the same time «, Psychoanalysis, 2009/1 (n ° 14), p. 113-128 https://www.cairn.info/revue-psychanalyse-2009-1-page-113.htm See also Jean-Christophe Bailly, op. cit., p. 163: “The pronominal scene does not put fixed ‘pronominalities’ opposite one another, it is arranged like the space of a sort of permanent crossfade where each position, held for a moment by such and such a being, would only be ‘a notch, both on the path of what composes it as a singularity, and on that of what exposes it to encounter other singularities, themselves similarly engaged in their own composition ”.
(4) Note, however, that the ten lines in question are recorded on one of the labels in the exhibition, each line being associated with the performer who selected it. Let’s remember them here: Washed out by so much immensity poured into her eyes; With the painful sweetness that rises in me like nausea; My feverish desires burst into foam; The mystery of each departure and each arrival; And the tissue of my nerves a net that dries on the beach; Ah anyway, anywhere to go; Live trembling in the instant of eternal waters; From the ancestral fear of straying and leaving; All this fine seduction creeps into my blood; And deep inside me slowly begins to turn a steering wheel.
(5) If video is a new path taken by the artist on the occasion of this residency-exhibition at Passerelle, sculpture, installation and performance constitute the preferred mediums of his practice where the setting in space and in contact through the body which activates and moves, thus highlighting notions such as movement, circulation and exchange.
(6) The feet are on the ground and the legs remain stationary. Only the arms move and stir the air. The upright position emphasizes the «air column» that runs through the upper body.
(7) Note that translation and composition go hand in hand here with a certain margin of interpretation and improvisation, both in terms of writing and performance.
(8) About this collaboration with students and more broadly, the course of the residency, read the interview http://www.leschantiers-residence.com/fanny-gicquel/
(9) A dialectic already at work in the notion of landscape-state of mind. Read Gaston Bachelard, The poetics of space, 1957, Paris, Quadrige PUF (6th edition, 1994), chap. IX, p. 191-207. «The below and the beyond silently repeat the dialectic of the inside and the outside: everything takes shape, even the infinite», p. 192.
(10) Note here the importance of touch. The analogy between body and landscape / nature here borders on their «fusion» symbolically illustrated by the collage visible on the back of the mirror in the exhibition space, which combines the outlines of a mass of united bodies (visible in the video and repeated during the performance) to the material of the rocks of the tip of Pen-Hir, in the Crozon peninsula.
(11) It should be noted that the film, if it is partially visible and audible by the visitor upon arrival - directly although from a distance, but also by «ricochet» via its reflection in the mirror in the first room -, is presented at the back of the second room.
(12) These layers, porous or even intertwined, could be those that form, without any fixed order, the film, the exhibition and the performance. Activated every Tuesday at 7 p.m. and on the third Saturday of the month at 3:30 p.m., the performance physically reintroduces the bodies (re) present continuously into the exhibition space via / in the film. By reflecting them, the mirror embraces them in the same time-image in which our own body can find its place.
(13) The different known meanings of representation here include the literal one of putting back in the present tense.
(14) We inevitably think of the work designed by German artist Franz Erhard Walther in the 1960s, between post-minimalist soft sculpture, clothing and performative ritual. http://i-ac.eu/fr/artistes/1241_franz-erhard-walther
(15) See Clément Rosset, Impressions fugitives. The shadow, the reflection, the echo, Paris, Minuit, 2004.
FR
Texte d'exposition par Loïc Le Gall (directeur du Centre d'Art Contemporain Passerelle) (2020)
L’exposition « Des éclats » se déploie dans deux salles à l’étage du centre d’art et mêle installations, sculptures et vidéo, envisagées comme un tout. Fanny Gicquel a souhaité répondre au contexte océanique de Brest en s’inspirant de l’ouvrage poétique Ode Maritime (1915) de Fernando Pessoa, écrivain portugais engagé du début du XXe siècle. De cette poésie en prose, elle a tiré une série de vers sondant le rapport de l’humain à la mer et projetant les notions de départ et de déplacement, tel que « Je veux partir avec vous, partout où vous êtes allés.». Cependant, les messages se retrouvent codés grâce à une technique particulière bien connue des marins : l’alphabet sémaphore, un moyen de communication qui, employant des drapeaux tenus à bout de bras, crypte l’alphabet latin. Les extraits de la poésie deviennent ainsi des « vers sémaphoriques » qui prennent la forme de sculptures, d’un film et de performances activées à des temps définis durant toute la durée de l’exposition. Fanny Gicquel conçoit les salles de Passerelle comme une scène, déroulant des filets semblables à des rideaux de théâtre, colorisant des murs devenant décors, et des sculptures de métal utilisées comme des accessoires par les acteurs. Avec « Des éclats », elle questionne la durabilité de l’événement de la performance et sa subsistance dans une exposition, tout autant que la dimension d’un langage codé qui perd de son sens.
L’âme de fond par Anne-Lou Vicente (2020)
« Sous sa forme simple, naturelle, primitive, loin de toute ambition esthétique et de toute métaphysique, la poésie est une joie du souffle, l'évident bonheur de respirer. Le souffle poétique, avant d’être une métaphore, est une réalité qu’on pourrait trouver dans la vie du poème si l’on voulait suivre les leçons de l’imagination matérielle aérienne. » (1)
Du paysage-état d’âme, le romantisme a fait un lieu commun, soumis respectivement à la variabilité des éléments et des sentiments. (É)mus par la force des vagues, paysage marin et âme humaine partagent sans doute une certaine intranquillité (2) et un même sens, in(dé)fini. Plus concrètement, la mer et le corps apparaissent tels des organismes vivants traversés, animés par l’air, élément dont il faut souligner l’essence et la puissance poétiques et cinématiques.
Ces trois entités que sont le corps, la mer et le souffle constituent les piliers de l’exposition de Fanny Gicquel présentée à Passerelle sous la forme d’une installation-vidéo-performance entièrement baignée de poésie. Et pour cause, son principal point d’ancrage n’est autre que le poème Ode maritime signé Álvaro de Campos (1890-1935). Cet ingénieur naval formé à Glasgow est en quelque sorte le dépositaire des impressions maritimes de celui qui a su manier l’art de l’hétéronymie comme personne : l’auteur portugais Fernando Pessoa (3). Jetant un pont entre Lisbonne et Brest, deux villes portuaires tournées vers le grand large, l’artiste s’est en particulier attachée à la première des trois parties de ce long poème en prose dans laquelle l’auteur, observant le Tage qui ouvre vers l’horizon océanique, bercé par le va-et-vient des embarcations et l’imaginaire fertile des départs et des arrivées, livre une approche sensorielle de l’élément marin.
En ont été extraits dix vers dont la présence ambiante dans l’exposition se révèle n’être ni audible ni lisible (4), mais visible et sensible à travers différents médiums — vidéo, sculpture et performance (5) — qui en distillent la version sémaphorique. Quoi de plus naturel en effet qu’un langage marin pour « traduire » ces vers aux reflets bleutés ? Tombé dans la même désuétude que les sémaphores, ces postes d’observation de la marine nationale surplombant mers et océans, ce langage codé consistait en des signaux émis au moyen des bras munis de drapeaux, chaque lettre de l’alphabet latin correspondant à une position spécifique.
À partir de ce langage corporel — et partant, non verbal — à la fois chthonien et aérien (6), Fanny Gicquel a ainsi composé (7) une chorégraphie élémentaire consistant en une série de gestes minimalistes essentiellement articulés autour du souffle, interprétés par plusieurs étudiant.e.s de l’EESAB de Brest (8). Par son mouvement et son rythme binaires — inspiration / expiration —, la respiration rappelle le caractère dual de tant de rituels naturels (ressac et marées, lever et coucher du soleil, jour et nuit, etc.) en même temps qu’elle convoque, tout en l’incorporant, la dialectique du dedans et du dehors (9), tels deux vases communicants.
Tourné en extérieur-jour sur la presqu’île de Crozon, le film L’immensité avec vous consiste en une succession de plans fixes comme autant de tableaux vivants donnant à voir, immergée en pleine nature, la communauté d’interprètes déclamer secrètement les vers choisis d’Ode maritime, manipuler et porter certains objets-accessoires — que l’on (re)trouve dans l’exposition — qui opèrent moins comme signes que comme traits d’union et points de contact entre les corps et le paysage. On oublie le réflexe du sens pour se laisser porter par la sensualité des images, des visages et des gestes, l’énergie communicative des corps et de la nature qui respirent à l’unisson (10). C’est le souffle qui parle, qui s’écoute, s’écoule et s’épanche au-delà de l’espace-temps du film lui-même. La respiration lente et profonde qui en constitue la bande-son apaisante et hypnotique donne son pouls à l’exposition (11) composée sur un mode fragmentaire, voire indiciaire. Lentement, se déploie, pièce par pièce, plan par plan, séquence par séquence, le décor au sein duquel est rejoué — et relu — le paysage poétique, peuplé d’objets et de corps « interactifs ».
Les lignes agencées dans l’espace scénique dessinent un parcours libre, un scénario à voies multiples, un récit visuel diffracté. Face à nous s’étire un horizon trouble : la sculpture en acier Je veux partir avec vous, partout ou vous êtes allés reprend et matérialise le tracé en langage sémaphorique de ce même vers d’Ode maritime. À mesure que l’on s’en approche, on perçoit sur la surface blanche du mur d’infimes larmes bleutées qui viennent « trahir » la présence d’une ligne de pigment bleu dissimulée derrière le trait de métal qui nous rappelle qu’à l’horizon, ciel et mer s’épousent par inframince. Aussi ténues soient-elles, les coulures témoignent d’un geste, d’une action dont on peut remonter le fil : au sol gît une éponge encore humide de l’eau dont elle s’est gonflée, recueillie dans l’empreinte d’une main ayant creusé la matière poreuse d’un bloc de plâtre. Évoquant un élément végétal autant qu’un soleil levant / couchant, un frêle éventail taillé dans un Plexiglas cuivré utilisé dans la fabrication de hublots de bateaux pour protéger de l’éblouissement se dresse à hauteur d’œil, formant un filtre potentiel sur l’exposition-paysage. Arrimé au sol (terre) et au plafond (ciel/air), un miroir noir reflète en l’aplatissant l’espace et ce(ux) qui s’y (re)trouve(nt) : il opère ici tel un liant entre les différentes strates spatio-temporelles de l’exposition, tant du point de vue de sa construction que de son déroulement (12), en même temps qu’il apparaît comme l’interface-clé d’une réflexion sur les notions de présence et de représentation (13). Reprenant librement la technique des nœuds utilisée pour les filets de pêche, Le tissu de mes nerfs consiste en deux rideaux-écrans dont les mailles ondulantes et vibratoires, loin de nous enserrer, font office de seuil flottant. Passé de l’autre côté, devant un mur couleur sable / chair se détache une grille blanche comme dessinée dans l’espace sur laquelle viennent se suspendre quatre manches-drapeaux en feutrine aux couleurs de la presqu’île de Crozon, portées ponctuellement par les interprètes dans le film et lors des différentes activations de la performance au cours de l’exposition (14).
Multipliant les points de vue et les lignes de fuite comme les sens et strates de lecture, traversée de long en large par un souffle commun, « Des éclats » fonctionne par « rebond », associant à la matérialité des objets-œuvres-corps en présence leurs « impressions fugitives » (15) comme pour mieux en amplifier le degré d’ancrage dans le présent et le réel, mais aussi, et surtout, la puissance de (rétro)projection — et de motion — imaginaire et poétique. Offerts à de multiples déplacements, transformations et autres translations spatiales et temporelles, corps, éléments, images, mots, matières, objets, flux et phénomènes (im)perceptibles communiquent silencieusement entre eux et s’animent indéfiniment au gré de leurs multiples correspondances.
(1) Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes, Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement, chap. XII « La déclamation muette », Paris, Librairie José Corti, p. 271.
(2) En référence à l’œuvre posthume de Fernando Pessoa (sous l’hétéronyme de Bernardo Soares), Le Livre de l’intranquillité. Les premiers mots de Jean-Christophe Bailly dans L’Élargissement du poème (Paris, Christian Bourgois, 2015) y font référence, ainsi qu’au paysage-état d’âme. Voir p. 13 : « Très tôt la leçon du romantisme allemand, tout entière nourrie de la Naturphilosophie de Schelling, a été oubliée, et à la mise en réseau de l’ensemble des existences, qu’elle illustrait par des ricochets et des échos, s’est substituée une version bourgeoise de l’épanchement, dont la célèbre question de Lamartine sur les objets ‘inanimés’ constitue sans doute le point culminant. »
(3) En portugais, « pessoa » signifie « personne ». Lire Iooss Filomena, « L'hétéronymie de Fernando Pessoa. Personne et tant d'êtres à la fois », Psychanalyse, 2009/1 (n° 14), p. 113-128 https://www.cairn.info/revue-psychanalyse-2009-1-page-113.htm Voir aussi Jean-Christophe Bailly, op. cit., p. 163 : « La scène pronominale ne met pas en face les unes des autres des ‘pronominalités’ fixes, elle se dispose comme l’espace d’une sorte de fondu enchaîné permanent où chaque position, tenue un instant par tel être, ne serait qu’une encoche, à la fois sur le chemin de ce qui le compose comme singularité, et sur celui de ce qui l’expose à croiser d’autres singularités, elles-mêmes pareillement engagées dans leur propre composition ».
(4) À noter toutefois que les dix vers en question sont renseignés sur l’un des cartels de l’exposition, chaque vers étant associé à l’interprète qui l’a sélectionné. Rappelons-les ici : Délavée par tant d’immensité déversée en ses yeux ; Avec la douceur douloureuse qui monte en moi comme une nausée ; Mes désirs enfiévrés crèvent en écume ; Le mystère de chaque départ et de chaque arrivée ; Et le tissu de mes nerfs un filet qui sèche sur la plage ; Ah n’importe comment n’importe où partir ; Vivre en tremblant l’instant des eaux éternelles ; De la peur ancestrale de s’éloigner et de partir ; Toute cette fine séduction s’insinue dans mon sang ; Et au fond de moi commence à tourner un volant lentement.
(5) Si la vidéo est une voie nouvelle empruntée par l’artiste à l’occasion de cette résidence-exposition à Passerelle, sculpture, installation et performance constituent les médiums de prédilection de sa pratique où entrent en jeu la mise en espace et en contact par l’intermédiaire du corps qui (s’)active et (se) déplace, mettant ainsi en relief des notions comme le mouvement, la circulation et l’échange.
(6) Les pieds sont au sol et les jambes restent immobiles. Seuls les bras bougent et brassent l’air. La position verticale souligne la « colonne d’air » qui traverse la partie supérieure du corps.
(7) Précisons que traduction et composition vont ici de pair avec une certaine marge d’interprétation et d’improvisation, tant sur le plan de l’écriture que de la performance.
(8) Au sujet de cette collaboration avec les étudiant.e.s et plus largement, le déroulement de la résidence, lire l’entretien http://www.leschantiers-residence.com/fanny-gicquel/
(9) Une dialectique déjà à l’œuvre dans la notion de paysage-état d’âme. Lire Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace, 1957, Paris, Quadrige PUF (6e édition, 1994), chap. IX, p. 191-207. « L’en-deçà et l’au-delà répètent sourdement la dialectique du dedans et du dehors : tout se dessine, même l’infini », p. 192.
(10) Notons ici l’importance du toucher. L’analogie entre corps et paysage/nature confine ici à leur « fusion » qu’illustre symboliquement le collage visible au verso du miroir présent dans l’espace d’exposition, qui combine les contours d’une masse de corps solidaires (visible dans la vidéo et répétée lors de la performance) à la matière des roches de la pointe de Pen-Hir, dans la presqu’île de Crozon.
(11) Il convient de préciser que le film, s’il est partiellement visible et audible par le visiteur dès son arrivée — de manière directe bien que lointaine, mais aussi par « ricochet » via son reflet dans le miroir présent dans la première salle —, est présenté au fond de la deuxième salle.
(12) Ces strates, poreuses voire entremêlées, pourraient être celles que forment, sans ordre arrêté, le film, l’exposition et la performance. Activée tous les mardi à 19h et le troisième samedi du mois à 15h30, la performance réintroduit physiquement dans l’espace d’exposition les corps (re)présent(é)s en continu via/dans le film. En les reflétant, le miroir les embrasse en une même image-temps dans laquelle notre propre corps peut se faire une place.
(13) Les différents sens connus de représentation incluent ici celui, littéral, de remettre au présent.
(14) On pense immanquablement à l’œuvre conçu par l’artiste allemand Franz Erhard Walther dès les années 1960, entre soft sculpture post-minimaliste, vêtement et rituel performatif. http://i-ac.eu/fr/artistes/1241_franz-erhard-walther
(15) Voir Clément Rosset, Impressions fugitives. L’ombre, le reflet, l’écho, Paris, Minuit, 2004
PRESSE
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DOCUMENTATION
Video interview
living on the border
Living on the border, 2020, sculptures-performance, 20 mn
Performers: Maria Ladopoulos, Mickey Mahar, Omagbitse Omagbemi
Images : © Robert Trieger © Roman März
ENG
Exhibition text by Justin Polera (2020)
Fanny Gicquel’s sculptures and performances adress ephemerality, fragility, and the inherent plurality of the self. Through slowness and immobility, her performances creates images close to a living picture, producing a particular poetic, tense, sometimes abstract, and uncertain athmosphere. When in performance, Gicquel’s sculpture act as measuring instruments, taking on the double function of marking the border between bodies while functioning as an extension of the body, allowing one to touch another.
The performance called Living on the Border, after a text by Leonora Miano explores the delicate and dynamic entanglements between oneself and the other. The artist was inspired by the way the author describes the borders as a place to inhabit and a place of hospitality where one can either be faithful or disloyal to the other. The border is a blurry, malleable space, liminal, and porous space in which bodies and objects come together and apart. The performance adresses the ‘dialectics of the outside and the inside’, focusing on the parallel ways that one lives inside one’s body and lives inside external space. Borders are both distancing and intimate, it is a place of hybridization with otherworld collide. « The border, as I define it and inhabit it, is the place where the world’s touch, tirelessly. The place of constant oscillation : from one space to another, from one sensitivity to another, from one vision of the world to another. Border evokes a relationship. » Bodies and identities bind a loosen to form a new body langage. This porosity of the border between intimacy and exteriority explore our promiscuity and our contemporary distances. Fanny Gicquel has been long interested in the ides around « personal space » and social distancing in the space between us, whiwh now seems ever present. The sculptures can stand alone as discrete objects, but are also seen as part of a larger choregraphy of objects that are used in the performance practice. The sculptures when used between the performers act as measuring instruments to mark the distance between moving bodies as the materiality of fragility and human fragility are coupled. Each object creates a relation between the sculptural object and the body as object, questioning the subject and object relation, in particular the objects take on an anthropomorphic life. Here the object has a double function : on one hand it marks the border between the bodies but on the other hand it is an extension of the body which makes is possible to reach and touch the other. Once hung,, the sculpture recalls the contours outlines of the bodies exterior but also a line of written tewt and a score for the choregraphy of movement or sound.
FR
Texte d'exposition par Justin Polera (2020)
La performance intitulée Living on the Border, d’après un texte de Leonora Miano explore les enchevêtrements délicats et dynamiques entre soi et l’autre. L’artiste a été inspiré par la manière dont l’auteur concoit la frontière comme un lieu d’habitation et d’hospitalité où l’un peut être soit fidèle, soit déloyal envers l’autre. «La frontière, telle que je la définit et l’habite, est le lieu où le monde se touche, inlassablement. Le lieu de l’oscillation constante: d’un espace à un autre, d’une sensibilité à une autre, d’une vision du monde à l’autre. La frontière évoque une relation. »1 Transposé plus précisement aux relation humaine, la frontière devient un espace flou, malléable, en hybridation ou se joue et se négocie la distance et l’intimité. Fanny Gicquel s’intéresse depuis longtemps aux notions «d’espace personnel» et de distanciation sociale, qui semble désormais omniprésent.Les sculptures agissent comme des instruments de mesure pour marquer la distance entre les corps en mouvement. Chaque objet crée une relation entre l’objet sculptural et le corps en tant qu’objet, questionnant la relation sujet-objet. Ici l’objet a une double fonction: d’une part il marque la frontière entre les corps mais d’autre part c’est une extension du corps qui permet d’atteindre et de toucher l’autre. Une fois accrochée, la sculpture rappelle des contours des corps extérieurs mais aussi une ligne de texte écrite et une partition pour la chorégraphie du mouvement ou du son.
TEXTS
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Statement and short bio
ENG
Fanny Gicquel is primarily interested in the concepts of relationships, language, care, and intimacy. She creates environments in which she experiments with presence between bodies, space, and the time of the exhibition in order to create a new syntax that questions our modes of relationships. Her sculptural works, often integrated into performances combining choreography and improvisation, evoke a kind of permeability between the self and the other, the inside and the outside, the human and the non-human. Fanny Gicquel imagines the world as a dynamic constellation of entanglements, intersections, and interferences.
Graduate from EESAB Rennes in 2018, Fanny Gicquel (born in 1992) has presented her work in several solo exhibitions, including at Passerelle, Center for Contemporary Art in Brest (FR), The left right Place in Reims (FR), and at Hua international gallery in Berlin(DE) and Beijing(CH). She has also been presented in Unworlding, a special section of Frieze (UK) organized by Cédric Fauq, as well as at the Art Souterrain Festival in Montreal, at Buropolis in Marseille, and at the Beiqiu Contemporary Art Museum in China. In 2022, she won the best exhibition award at the Gallery Weekend Beijing for her exhibition «Now, and then» in Beijing. She then went on to a research and creation residency at Fieldwork Marfa in Texas thanks to the Hostcall prize she won in 2021.
Recently, Fanny Gicquel held a solo exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery+Studio in Dublin in May 2023, following the Art Norac Prize which she was awarded. Over the past few months, she has showcased her work at Galerie im Saalbau in Berlin (curated by Nina Marlene Kraus) as well as at Galerie de Rohan in Landerneau (curated by Vincent-Michael Vallet). Furthermore, she is in residence at the Archives de la Critique d'Art in Rennes, where she is working on an ambitious collaborative and performative project.
FR
Fanny Gicquel s'intéresse principalement aux concepts de relations, de langage, de soins et d'intimité. Elle crée des environnements, dans lesquels elle expérimente la présence entre les corps, l'espace et le temps de l'exposition afin de créer une nouvelle syntaxe qui interroge nos mode de relations. Ses oeuvres sculptural, souvent intégrées dans des performances combinant chorégraphie et improvisation, évoquent une sorte de perméabilité entre le soi et l'autre, l'intérieur et l'extérieur, l'humain et le non-humain. Fanny Gicquel imagine le monde comme une constellation dynamique d'entrelacements, de croisements et d'interférences.
Diplômée de l'EESAB Rennes en 2018, Fanny Gicquel (née en 1992) a présenté son travail lors de plusieurs expositions personnelles, notamment à Passerelle, Centre d'Art Contemporain à Brest, The Left Right Place à Reims, et à la galerie Hua International à Berlin et Beijing. Récemment, son travail a entre autres été présenté dans Unworlding, une section spéciale de Frieze organisée par Cédric Fauq, ainsi qu'à Buropolis (Marseille) et au Musée d'art Contemporain de Beiqiu (Chine). Elle a été en résidence de recherche et création à Fieldwork Marfa au Texas grâce au prix Hostcall.
Dernièrement, Fanny Gicquel a réalisé une exposition personnelle à Temple Bar Gallery+Studio à Dublin en mai 2023, suite au prix Art Norac dont elle a été lauréate. Ces derniers mois, elle a présenté son travail à la Galerie im Saalbau (Berlin, commissariat : Nina Marlene Kraus) ainsi qu'à la Galerie de Rohan (Landerneau, commissariat : Vincent-Michael Vallet). Par ailleurs, elle est en résidence aux Archives de la Critique d'art à Rennes, où elle réalise un ambitieux projet collaboratif et performatif.
The texts below are in English, but you can find some of them in French here. Please feel free to ask me for the official translations.
breathing with heels, walking with eyes by Michael Hill, Programme Curator, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (2023)
Fanny Gicquel’s tactile and adaptive sculptural environments refer to intimate and natural forms. Their components are dependent on one another, providing resting points where groups of objects and materials harmonise and perform. The serpentine aluminium stripes that delineate the gallery floor share likenesses with the curvature of a body in repose or an undulating shoreline. This alignment between discreet bodily outlines and formations in nature allows Gicquel to explore the touching point between the animate and the inanimate, tracing a moving and transitory landscape.
Language meets materiality throughout the exhibition. Its title pairs two references by David Le Breton, a sociologist and anthropologist who writes about walking as a metaphysical experience. In his book, Walking Life: A Quiet Art of Happiness, Breton discusses ‘breathing with heels’, a Taoist method of consciously engaging with the earth beneath our feet, its energy and connectivity; ‘walking with eyes’ is an expression by Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969), an explorer and spiritualist who advocated moving through the world by intuition, without following a predetermined path. Comparably, Gicquel’s approach to the installation of the exhibition was determined by bringing together many disparate components and materials, and responsively composing their relationships in the gallery itself. For her this transitional approach is an amalgamation between studio and exhibition spaces, and the flow of work is circulatory.
A terrain of aluminium tracks and drifting sandbanks opens up several circuitous routes through the exhibition. how far is it? how far is it now? (2023) takes its title from the opening lines of ‘Getting There' by Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965), and also recalls a child’s excited anticipation on a day trip. The guiding pathways are made by casting directly from the beach itself, Penmarch in the artist’s home region of Bretagne. Gicquel inscribed marks in the sand, at times with intent and others more aimlessly, to create spirals, trails and accents that were then filled with molten aluminium, incorporating traces of sand, stones, and flaws from reactions between the liquid metal with saltwater in the ground.
Visitors are encouraged to mimic Gicquel’s beach ‘drifting’ and make decisions about their movements, attentiveness and pace in the room, echoing the motions of four performers who periodically inhabit the exhibition with a combination of individual and collective actions. The integration of choreographed and improvised activations, imagined by the artist and then carefully, yet playfully, enacted by the performers, create a curious sense of self-awareness. Their subtle gestures, which activate Gicquel’s installation, include contact, rearrangement and interaction with each other and elemental substances like water, air, vapour, and reflected light.
During her first visit to Temple Bar last year, Gicquel observed the passersby outside the gallery, and how this constant presence plays an intrinsic role in the exhibitions. Her observations of hurried purposeful movement in the street prompted a response to slow down and move without intention of getting somewhere, within the exhibition. This sensation is integrated into her work through the symbolism of a meeting point, or place of connection. The large glass windows are a visual and light-porous screen connecting inside and outside, just as the beach is the meeting point between land and sea, constituted by the merging of solid and liquid material. Gicquel utilises the window of the gallery as a site of seeing and being seen. The harmony between stillness and movement is also a feature of her installations, particularly resonant in the slow and meditative performances, where gentle concentration prompts close relationships between objects and bodies.
The setting of the beach is bound to leisurely mindfulness, activated by the relaxing sounds of rolling waves and seabirds. It is expansive by its own nature, and Gicquel plays with the associations of horizontal space between land and sea, and the actions that typically take place there, such as lying down and sunbathing. sharing skysummer (2023), a grouping of blue and purple fabric banners, hangs at floor level in the gallery creating a horizon. It also resembles a windbreaker that offers protection from the elements and the privacy of enclosure. The banners signify potential for reconfiguration and can be folded, stretched and repositioned like picnic blankets, beach towels or semaphore flags. Gicquel hints at the possibility of a ‘living painting’ that could shift the backdrop of the exhibition, leaving the installation open to change, through the actions of the performers.
Throughout the installation, the channels of sand indicate moments to pause beside glass rock pools, filled with water (a stone or a wave, 2023), fragments of mirror and blown-glass implements (body of work for aquaspace, 2023). The surrounding areas also draw attention to particles of shell, weathered glass, and hand-formed, coloured paraffin balls; shapes that coalesce the natural and imaginary. During the installation, we reflected on Virginia Woolf’s short story ‘Solid Objects’ (1920). One of its many entwined threads is the protagonist’s increasing obsession with the discovery of material fragments (glass worn smooth by the waves, a broken shard of ceramic), however his inquisitiveness and childlike wonder about the sand, and its interaction with water, as well as the “half-conscious reverie” in which he increasingly experiences the world, is particularly resonant with Gicquel’s exhibition.*
As Woolf describes the ‘unmistakable vitality’ of figures walking on a deserted beach, Gicquel links the interior and exterior of the gallery, with works that exaggerate and playfully respond to the activity outside and their distance within the protected gallery setting. mouth was thinking about eyes (2023), is a trio of suspended glass cones, that reference loudhailers, telescopes, or listening devices that are a direct response to the vibrant and chaotic Temple Bar street, which also create the potential for personal sensory experiences like listening to the sound of the sea inside a shell. Gicquel’s use of sand throughout the exhibition avoids a definitive configuration for materials due to its indeterminate positioning, while also acknowledging the links to care and restoration with the beach and sea swimming in the Dublin cityscape.
Three larger sculptures that take the form of disembodied limbs are placed on the floor, or against the wall, their title, prendre corps, meaning ‘to take shape’, draws parallels between the hand-wrought fabrication of the work, its visualisation as sculptural body parts, and activation by performers. Gicquel has considered the implied vulnerability of the objects’ exposed knees, elbows and heels by placing upholstered cushions (rest to the bones, 2023) between the skeletal joints and the hard surfaces of the building; another point of connection, which has been considered with care and intimacy.
- “Looked at again and again half consciously by a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it”. ‘Solid Objects’ was brought to our attention by artist Niamh O’Malley, who shared an article by Margaret Iverson on the work of artists Becky Beasley and Lucy Skaer.
An imagination of Total Bodily Autonomy by Nina Marlene Kraus (2023)
Published in the exhibition book
French artist Fanny Gicquel’s sculptural installations create delicate and dynamic environments, encouraging visitors to move their bodies among them and invithing them to imagine how it would be like to engage with them. The interrelated individual components in her works form a cohesive microcosm as various objects and materials form connections with each other, developing into points of support and calm. Scattered across the floor or hanging from the ceiling, objects of glass, metal, and fabric encourage visitors to enter into an intimate exchange with them and to imagine what it would be like to touch them.
Gicquel uses the concept of affordance, which originated in psychology and digital design, to explore the potential for self-determination in objects and challenge our assumptions about their capabilities. The affordance concept is the stimulus to interaction emanating from an object and its ability to be understood without further explanation. While we are familiar with how everyday objects prompt interaction through learned conventions, abstract objects offer a much broader scope for interaction, a scope that points to the transformation potential inherent in these objects. By experimenting with transformable materials like paraffin and heat-sensitive paint, which are mutable and constantly in flux, Gicquel emphasises the impermanence and multiplicity of the objects around us. The objects each pass through two phases – one of contemplation and one of manipulation — challenging the clear separation of animate and inanimate.
Gicquel’s installations always incorporate activations choreographed by the artist and carried out by various performers, with careful consideration given to the performative animation of the objects. Taking cues from the environment art forms of the 50s and 60s actionists, Gicquel creates environments in which future performances are to take place. The performers interact with the objects in discreet, almost imperceptible ways; images resembling a tableau vivant emerge, inviting visitors to linger and contemplate. Boundaries between the bodies of the performers and the objects become increasingly blurred. They become extensions of one another, raising the questions if the performer are reacting to the objects or — vice versa —if the objects are reacting to the performers.
just for a while or a night by Saki Hibino, co-curator with Tomoya Iwata for the exhibition " La chambre cocon" at Cité des Arts (Paris)
just for a while or a night brings together both old and new works by Fanny Gicquel for the first time. The fluctuating synergy between bodies, objects, and moments unfolds within Gicquel's flexible spatial choreography, exploring themes such as the body, interpersonal relationships, language, care, intimacy, transformation and fragility. For her installation at the Cité des Arts, the artist outlines a transient and shifting landscape, inhabited by sculptures that establish a direct relationship with the receiving space's architecture. Taking into account the choreographic dimension of the hanging and the visitor's body, the artist tries to harmoniously arrange the work to create a new syntax, enabling different materials to subtly communicate with each other and establish a dialogue with the viewer's body.
Certain pairs of small stainless-steel sculptures are directly installed on the floor, with each shape emphasizing a different means of finding balance, such as rooting, swaying, or freezing. Other small sculptures made of paraffin and held in the hand like a ball contain natural and organic elements collected or found by the artist (e.g., hair, flowers, cigarette butts). A score, reflecting Gicquel's interest in gesture and movement notation, provides clues to past and future actions. Some little mysterious glasses objects are delicately placed.. These objects have in common that they are both instruments, extensions, or tools for the body. They are all in a transitory state between immobility and their potential action or relationship with the human body.
Gicquel creates delicate and mobile environments that invite the viewer's body to move. Her installations function as microcosms where the various elements maintain interdependent relationships. Gicquel's works exist in two phases: contemplation and manipulation, exploring the boundary between animate and inanimate. This is further illustrated through her experimentation with changing materials, like paraffin, which resist a fixed form and evoke the impermanence and multiplicity of our surroundings. Activation scenarios devised by the artist and enacted by performers accompany her installations. These scenarios involve discreet interactions between the objects and performers, sometimes producing images akin to tableaux vivants, encouraging observation and slowing down.
Close to the catarct by Henri Guette (2022)
Published on YACI/Jeune critique d’art
There is always an impression of fragility with glass. Perhaps because it is the materialization of a breath and we know how much a breath can break. A frozen breath whose contours would be words, whose breakings always have an air of threat. With glass, we make pretty things like little animals, menageries that gather dust on the shelves when we don’t know how to love them. With glass, we sink into the breathing of another. Fanny Gicquel, with glass, gives a second form to our bodies, the double of a heart with Plain Pleasure, or that of a rib cage with I said cage no room. In the light, these glass ducts shine and it is as if they underline an absence.
Two sisters or two performers, depending on the situation, smoke or vape. They don’t speak to each other and perhaps understand each other on the side. The installation Close to the Cataract is designed for two people, who are complicit enough to seek each other’s company and yet so absorbed in themselves that they seem to miss each other; this is also what brings them together with two heroines of the British novelist Jane Bowles: Harriet and Sadie, sisters in Camp Cataract (1949).
One inhales, the other exhales. It’s the same smoke and you can see from the condensation and the drops of water how close they are. Live as close as possible to each other. They are two glass flutes that carry an inaudible music, perhaps because we are not in tune, in this same time that is here as if extended. It is like two runners passing the baton to each other, because they cannot hold hands. The second, the third in a family, sometimes by a few minutes, often by several years: what to do with one’s own place? We are on the verge of a rupture, the cataract and the sound of the fall should engulf everything. A wet explosion followed by a haggard silence. This is what lies between the lines, what overflows from the words: the unspoken nature of literature, dear to Bowles and to his contemporary, the American playwright Tennessee Williams. Dear perhaps to all those who know what can be lost by talking too much.
We cling to the gestures as if we were trying to communicate. One inhales and the other exhales her electronic cigarette. She pulls her head into her cage; inside there is still something that does not sit well, perhaps an anxiety. All in tension, the score Au diable les sœurs begins with an air of playing with hands, four hands that seek each other out and rebuke each other until they attack each other’s faces. Mimicry is said to be a strategy of seduction. It is said that reproducing the gestures of the other is a way of seeking approval. It is said that mirroring increases empathy, but anyone who has been confronted with someone who imitates them too much knows that irritation is not far off. We” don’t hold on to much. Boundaries are always being recomposed and you have to be prepared to see the blow go off, even in your hands. The space between the hands does not only indicate the resistance of the air, but also everything that one has to invest in a performance; the interpretative capacity.
They don’t speak to each other and perhaps understand each other on the side. In what is being played out, small gestures divert large rivers and variations reveal a traumatic event. Jane Bowles’ heroines are presented to us as “dysfunctional” and perhaps it is indeed of rehashing that the installation, the camp, speaks to us. What would we have done differently if we had known? Could we read the events differently? What temporality informs our judgments and assessments? The story does not make a decision and leaves the reader with an open ending. The installation itself plays with suspense and the objects gently placed on the floor give a sense of an environment. The fragile hooks put the walls and the floor in tension, all that we believe to be given.
Who will have the last word of the two young women? In Fanny Gicquel’s Invention Exercise, they compose and recompose words from the same set of letters. What could be a game of anagrams becomes, however, a confrontation about language through the intensity of the protagonists. They do not speak, but the letters they rearrange more and more violently, clash and find a sonic materiality. It is a game that forces the possibilities of language; words are formed before thought, the image of words even before their meaning. It is not possible through language to reach the thought of the other, which exceeds, overflows; the contours of the same words change according to whether they are of one or the other. Once again, we touch on the unspoken, and on what in Jane Bowles or Tennessee Williams makes literature.
In the multiple interactions that the objects provoke, there is the idea of collaboration. With To Pass in his Head, it is necessary to work hand in hand to carry the sculpted aluminium disc and, as the title suggests, to empathise. The disc is passed from one face to the other in a circular rotation, in a revolution that induces passage like a ritual that would mark one’s readiness to open up or receive the other. To put oneself in the head of the other as to put oneself in The skins from others with the skin of the others implies to think in one’s own place. What your hand are telling me is part of this same movement by extracting the lines of the hand and materialising them in aluminium. Lines of life which, like jacks, are as much a bet on the future as the ambition to enter the life of the other through the surface. The different protocols that Fanny Gicquel thinks of lead us to manifest a link, to make explicit the intention behind a simple gesture and in the journey towards the other to go to the borders of empathy and violence.
The hand that caresses can also be the one that strikes. The glass fists of An Insecure Hand undoubtedly contribute to the ambiguity of the whole installation. Without fingers, this counter-form, which acts like a glove, makes the person wearing it clumsy. A hand without fingers, two hands without fingers, is like having two left hands that do not allow one to sign, to communicate through the sign. A boxer would say that it is the most direct access to the other, through the blow. The touch of the fists is blunt, it suffocates at the same time as it embraces. The fight does not prevent a form of tenderness, the ambiguity of a feeling in the body to body. The person who wears them carries the difficulty of expressing himself without hurting the other person. Is it a prosthesis or a handicap? Glass makes what has no outline shine. It has no consciousness but manifests and amplifies the impulses that run through us. There is always an impression of fragility with glass. Even more so when you hang up the gloves, when you tie them delicately to a rack.
Where does a waterfall stop? The loop of the installation thus acts as if it constantly allows for new rereadings, an opportunity to see what is tied up without ever really untying itself and to go to the limits of a text, to its doors, to its breaths. On the two large heat-sensitive plates of The Door between them, the sisters place flowers as in a herbarium. A way of gathering a moment, of sketching out another language perhaps, and of preserving a memory in a certain way. Slowly, Fanny Gicquel sponges hot water on these surfaces. As the water trickles down, the steam and fog render the shiny surface opaque, giving a breath of air to the odourless flowers. We no longer see the reflection but simply the presence. Here we are, for a moment, back to life, near the cataract.
One inhales, the other exhales.
Les lézards[the lizards] by Elena Cardin (2022)
Fanny Gicquel creates mobile and delicate environments within which the viewer’s body is invited to move. Her installations appear as microcosms in which the different elements maintain mutually interdependent relationships. Placed on the floor or suspended from the ceiling, Fanny Gicquel’s objects, made of glass, metal or fabric, invite the viewer to touch them and aspire to create a form of intimacy with them. Her works thus exist in two phases, that of contemplation and that of manipulation, allowing her to explore the border between the animate and the inanimate. This also manifests itself in the experimentation with changing materials such as paraffin and heat-sensitive paint that escape a definitive form, evoking the impermanence and multiplicity of the things that surround us.
The installations are always accompanied by activation scenarios devised by the artist and played out by performers. They interact with the objects in a discreet, or sometimes almost imperceptible way, to the point of creating images close to the tableau vivant, which invites slowing down and observation.
For his new installation at the Frac Bretagne, the artist draws the outline of a moving and transitory landscape, inhabited by sculptures that enter into a direct relationship with the architecture of the place that receives them. Harmoniously arranged in the space, the works create a new syntax allowing the different materials to communicate subtly with each other and to dialogue with the viewer’s body.
Critical text (excerpt) About the exhibition «Les lézards» by Pierre Ruault (2022)
Published on Revue 02
The tour then continues with laloreleï, a poetic and sensitive installation by Frac prize-winning artist Fanny Gicquel. It is a composite environment that extends over the floor, walls and ceiling of the gallery. Four monochrome paintings in yellow, beige, green and brown are laid out on the floor in the centre of the space, some in a chromatic superimposition effect. On one of them are three very fine, small sculptures made from rings and geometric shapes in gold-plated brass: The Stars, tools of music by day and by night. At the edge of a window in the gallery, on the floor and against the wall, we look at an alignment of small paraffin spheres. These are the little lost planets, unique objects that contain organic elements that the artist has collected, such as strands of hair, pearls and flowers. There is also the organic-looking glass piece, Et mon corps est un asile ouvert toute la nuit, which is suspended from the ceiling and contains mysterious yellowish liquids at its ends.
The strength of this installation lies in the fact that it is conceived as a plastic and relational syntax between each object, which maintains links of mutual interdependence and dialogue with the bodies it encounters. Forced to stoop, to look up, to walk around, the spectator is invited to experience his own bodily presence. This installation is also supported by an activation scenario. A performer slowly executes a variety of choreographic gestures, interacting with certain objects, which fall within the field of attention to the other. By spraying hot water with a sponge, the performer creates ephemeral forms of white drips on the sculpture Sensitive surface: thermotactile, an imposing black parallelepipedic monolith made from heat-sensitive paint. In her work, Fanny emphasises the power of time insofar as it continually changes the forms of things and beings, making it impossible to speak of a fixed identity.
Questioning our relationship to space, time and things by Silvana Annicchiarico (2022)
Published on Domus Magasine. Talent Section -N° 1072
Fanny Gicquel creates environments, not objects. She invents worlds, artificial places where the body can experience another space and time. Poised between the performing arts and emotional and communicative design, Gicquel imagines universes not as statically inhabited places occupied by well-defined, partitioned object-entities, but as spaces of osmosis and exchange: dynamic constellations of combinations, hybrids and interferences. In her work, bodies interact with wearable objects that can change or be manipulated, all striving to define experiences of reciprocity between the self and the other, internal and external, human and non human. Through choreographed performances, the designer makes the bodies of her performers move among objects that abhor immutability. Whether they are glass vases set among groups of steel sculptures or words that appear then disappear in multilingual anagrams and palindromes, her objects – in her own words – “are all active, changing, escaping a definitive form to highlight the impermanence of the things around us and to testify to the fragility of the world.”
Born in 1992 in Rennes, France, 30-year- old Gicquel has exhibited in France and Canada and, from June to October 2022, staged her second solo show at Hua International Gallery in Beijing, where she endeavoured to create situations that question and reveal the porosity and ambiguity between intimate and impersonal, inwardness and outwardness, reality and make-believe, sweetness and violence, constriction and freedom. Attentive to the connections between the forms of things (one of her videos explores the relationship between a snail shell and an ear cavity), she articulates an investigation based on cultured references – from Gaston Bachelard to Fernando Pessoa – to question our approach to space, time and things.
L’âme de fond about solo exhibition «Des éclats [sharps] » by Anne-Lou Vicente (2020)
«In its simple, natural, primitive form, far from any aesthetic ambition and any metaphysics, poetry is a joy of the breath, the obvious happiness of breathing. The poetic breath, before being a metaphor, is a reality that one could find in the life of the poem if one wanted to follow the lessons of the aerial material imagination.»(1)
Romanticism has made a common place out of the landscape-state of mind, subject respectively to the variability of elements and feelings. (É) moved by the force of the waves, seascape and human soul undoubtedly share a certain uneasiness (2) and the same meaning, in (de) finite. More concretely, the sea and the body appear as living organisms traversed, animated by the air, an element whose poetic and cinematic essence and power must be emphasized.
These three entities of the body, the sea and the breath constitute the pillars of Fanny Gicquel’s exhibition presented at Passerelle in the form of an installation-video-performance entirely bathed in poetry. And for good reason, its main anchor point is none other than the poem Ode maritime signed Álvaro de Campos (1890-1935). This Glasgow-trained naval engineer is in a way the repository of the maritime impressions of one who knew how to handle the art of heteronymy like no one else: the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa (3). Building a bridge between Lisbon and Brest, two port cities facing the open sea, the artist focused in particular on the first of three parts of this long prose poem in which the author, observing the Tagus which opens towards the oceanic horizon, rocked by the comings and goings of boats and the fertile imagination of departures and arrivals, delivers a sensory approach to the marine element.
Ten verses were extracted from it, the ambient presence of which in the exhibition turns out to be neither audible nor readable (4), but visible and sensitive through different mediums - video, sculpture and performance (5) - which distill the version. semaphoric. What could be more natural than a marine language to «translate» these lines with bluish reflections? Falling into the same obsolescence as semaphores, these observation posts of the French Navy overlooking seas and oceans, this coded language consisted of signals emitted by means of arms equipped with flags, each letter of the Latin alphabet corresponding to a position specific.
From this body language - and therefore, non-verbal - both chthonic and aerial (6), Fanny Gicquel has thus composed (7) an elementary choreography consisting of a series of minimalist gestures essentially articulated around the breath, interpreted by several students of the EESAB in Brest (8). By its binary movement and rhythm - inspiration / expiration -, breathing recalls the dual character of so many natural rituals (surf and tides, sunrise and sunset, day and night, etc.) at the same time as it summons, while incorporating it, the dialectic of the inside and the outside (9), like two communicating vessels.
Shot outdoors during the day on the Crozon peninsula, the film Immensity with you consists of a succession of still shots like so many living tableaux giving to see, immersed in nature, the community of performers secretly declaiming the verses. chosen from Maritime Ode, to handle and wear certain accessory objects - which we (re) find in the exhibition - which operate less as signs than as hyphens and points of contact between bodies and the landscape. We forget the reflex of sense to let ourselves be carried away by the sensuality of images, faces and gestures, the communicative energy of bodies and of nature which breathe in unison (10). It is the breath that speaks, that listens, flows and exudes beyond the space-time of the film itself. The slow and deep breathing that constitutes its soothing and hypnotic soundtrack gives its pulse to the exhibition (11) composed in a fragmentary, even indicative fashion. Slowly, piece by piece, shot by shot, sequence by sequence, unfolds the setting within which is replayed - and re-read - the poetic landscape, populated by «interactive» objects and bodies.
The lines arranged in the scenic space draw a free course, a multi-lane scenario, a diffracted visual narrative. In front of us, a cloudy horizon stretches out: the steel sculpture I want to leave with you, wherever you have been takes up and materializes the outline in semaphoric language of this same line of maritime Ode. As we approach it, we perceive on the white surface of the wall tiny bluish tears which “betray” the presence of a line of blue pigment hidden behind the metal line which reminds us that the horizon, sky and sea merge by infra-thin.
As slight as they are, the drips testify to a gesture, to an action whose thread can be traced: on the ground lies a sponge still wet with the water with which it has swelled, collected in the imprint of a hand having hollowed out the porous material of a block of plaster. Evoking a plant element as much as a rising / setting sun, a frail fan carved from a copper-colored Plexiglas used in the manufacture of boat portholes to protect from glare rises at eye level, forming a potential filter on the landscape-exhibition. Tied to the ground (earth) and to the ceiling (sky / air), a black mirror reflects by flattening the space and what (ow) that is (re) there (s): it operates here like a binder between the different spatio-temporal strata of the exhibition, both from the point of view of its construction and of its unfolding (12), at the same time that it appears as the key interface of a reflection on the notions of presence and representation (13). Freely resuming the knot technique used for fishing nets, The fabric of my nerves consists of two screen curtains whose undulating and vibrating meshes, far from enclosing us, act as a floating threshold. Passed on the other side, in front of a sand / flesh-colored wall, a white grid stands out as if drawn in space on which hang four felt flag sleeves in the colors of the Crozon peninsula, occasionally worn by the performers in the film and during the various activations of the performance during the exhibition (14).
Multiplying points of view and lines of flight like the senses and strata of reading, traversed back and forth by a common breath, “Des éclats” works by “rebound”, associating the materiality of the objects-works-bodies in the presence. their “fleeting impressions” (15) as if to better amplify their degree of anchoring in the present and the real, but also, and above all, the power of (retro) projection - and motion - imaginary and poetic. Available in multiple displacements, transformations and other spatial and temporal translations, bodies, elements, images, words, materials, objects, flows and (im) perceptible phenomena communicate silently with each other and come alive indefinitely according to their multiple correspondences.
(1) Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes, Essay on the imagination of movement, chap. XII “La déclamation muette”, Paris, Librairie José Corti, p. 271.
(2) In reference to the posthumous work of Fernando Pessoa (under the heteronym of Bernardo Soares), The Book of Tranquility. The first words of Jean-Christophe Bailly in L’Élargissement du poème (Paris, Christian Bourgois, 2015) refer to it, as well as to the landscape-state of soul. See p. 13: “Very early on, the lesson of German romanticism, entirely nourished by Schelling’s Naturphilosophy, was forgotten, and by the networking of all existences, which it illustrated by ricochets and echoes, s’ a bourgeois version of effusion is substituted, of which Lamartine’s famous question on ‘inanimate’ objects undoubtedly constitutes the culmination. «
(3) In Portuguese, “pessoa” means “person”. Read Iooss Filomena, “The heteronymy of Fernando Pessoa. No one and so many beings at the same time «, Psychoanalysis, 2009/1 (n ° 14), p. 113-128 https://www.cairn.info/revue-psychanalyse-2009-1-page-113.htm See also Jean-Christophe Bailly, op. cit., p. 163: “The pronominal scene does not put fixed ‘pronominalities’ opposite one another, it is arranged like the space of a sort of permanent crossfade where each position, held for a moment by such and such a being, would only be ‘a notch, both on the path of what composes it as a singularity, and on that of what exposes it to encounter other singularities, themselves similarly engaged in their own composition ”.
(4) Note, however, that the ten lines in question are recorded on one of the labels in the exhibition, each line being associated with the performer who selected it. Let’s remember them here: Washed out by so much immensity poured into her eyes; With the painful sweetness that rises in me like nausea; My feverish desires burst into foam; The mystery of each departure and each arrival; And the tissue of my nerves a net that dries on the beach; Ah anyway, anywhere to go; Live trembling in the instant of eternal waters; From the ancestral fear of straying and leaving; All this fine seduction creeps into my blood; And deep inside me slowly begins to turn a steering wheel.
(5) If video is a new path taken by the artist on the occasion of this residency-exhibition at Passerelle, sculpture, installation and performance constitute the preferred mediums of his practice where the setting in space and in contact through the body which activates and moves, thus highlighting notions such as movement, circulation and exchange.
(6) The feet are on the ground and the legs remain stationary. Only the arms move and stir the air. The upright position emphasizes the «air column» that runs through the upper body.
(7) Note that translation and composition go hand in hand here with a certain margin of interpretation and improvisation, both in terms of writing and performance.
(8) About this collaboration with students and more broadly, the course of the residency, read the interview http://www.leschantiers-residence.com/fanny-gicquel/
(9) A dialectic already at work in the notion of landscape-state of mind. Read Gaston Bachelard, The poetics of space, 1957, Paris, Quadrige PUF (6th edition, 1994), chap. IX, p. 191-207. «The below and the beyond silently repeat the dialectic of the inside and the outside: everything takes shape, even the infinite», p. 192.
(10) Note here the importance of touch. The analogy between body and landscape / nature here borders on their «fusion» symbolically illustrated by the collage visible on the back of the mirror in the exhibition space, which combines the outlines of a mass of united bodies (visible in the video and repeated during the performance) to the material of the rocks of the tip of Pen-Hir, in the Crozon peninsula.
(11) It should be noted that the film, if it is partially visible and audible by the visitor upon arrival - directly although from a distance, but also by «ricochet» via its reflection in the mirror in the first room -, is presented at the back of the second room.
(12) These layers, porous or even intertwined, could be those that form, without any fixed order, the film, the exhibition and the performance. Activated every Tuesday at 7 p.m. and on the third Saturday of the month at 3:30 p.m., the performance physically reintroduces the bodies (re) present continuously into the exhibition space via / in the film. By reflecting them, the mirror embraces them in the same time-image in which our own body can find its place.
(13) The different known meanings of representation here include the literal one of putting back in the present tense.
(14) We inevitably think of the work designed by German artist Franz Erhard Walther in the 1960s, between post-minimalist soft sculpture, clothing and performative ritual. http://i-ac.eu/fr/artistes/1241_franz-erhard-walther
(15) See Clément Rosset, Impressions fugitives. The shadow, the reflection, the echo, Paris, Minuit, 2004.
INFO/CONTACT
CONTACT
07/03/1992
fanny_gicquel@outlook.fr
+33623660730
fannygicquel.com
IG
Represented by HUA International (Berlin-Beijing)
Base-Document d'Artiste Bretagne
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
breathing with heels, walking with eyes, Temple Bar Gallery+Studio, Dublin-IE
2022
now, and then, Hua International, Beijing- CH
2021
UNWORLDING , Frieze, London (solobooth) - UK
Curated by Cédric Fauq
Do you feel the same, Hua International, Berlin- DE
2020
Toute forme garde une trace de vie, The left right place, Reims - FR
Des éclats , Passerelle, Center for Contemporary Art, Brest - FR
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
The infinity of grapes, CNEAI, Paris - FR
Curated by Ann Stouvenel
Sunset, Galerie de Rohan, Landerneau - FR
Curated by Vincent-Michael Vallet
Rendez-vous à Saint Briac, Saint Briac - FR
Curated by Finis Terrae
Duet: Scores for movement, Hua International, Beijing/Berlin-CH DE
la chambre cocon, Citée International des Arts, Paris - FR
Curated by Saki Hibino and Tomoya Iwata
An imagination of Total Bodily Autonomy, Galerie im Saalbau Berlin -DE
Curated by Nina Kraus
Co-existence, 1st Biejing Art Contemporary Biennale, Beijing - CH
2022
Les lézards, Exhibition - Art Norac Prize, FRAC Bretagne - FR
Curated by Elena Cardin
Soft Machines, Hua International Gallery, Berlin - DE
Diving deep for light into darkness, Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art -CH
Curated by Tiange Yang
2021
Kratt, l’ombre d’un météore, Buropolis, Marseille- FR
Curated by 4 artist run space
Hallen#2- Yes to all, K60, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin - DE
Le rayon vert, summer research cycle and digital exhibition - FR
Curated by Henri Guette
Hostcall, Open School Gallery, Nantes - FR
Tsundoku, Collège Jean Lurçat, Lorient-FR Curated by 4 artist run space
Screening Sculpture, travelling exhibition, London to St Petersburg Curated by Ania Soko and Georgia Stephenson
10e Prix de la Jeune Création de Saint-Rémy, Saint-Rémy - FR
2020
Touching Feeling, Hua International Gallery, Beijing-CH
Walking In Ice, Hua International Gallery, Berlin- DE
- Machine ronde* , Loto Artist Run Space, Bruxelles - BE
2019
Crossroad 3px2p , Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes - FR
RE - OX , Galerie Loire, Nantes - FR
Emergence, Galerie Pictura, Cesson-Sévigné – FR2018
Cosmorama , Museum of Fine Arts, Rennes-FR
Katapeltes , International House of Rennes-FR
Curated by Collectif Uklukk
FESTIVAL AND PERFORMANCE
2022
Occuper l’espace, Postal Museum, Paris - FR
Curated by Dominique Blais
2021
Festival Ausufern, Uferstudios, Berlin-DE
Curated by Sandhya Daemgen and Eva-Maria Hoerster
Chronométrie, Festival Art Souterrain, Montréal-CA
Curated by Nathalie Bachand and Dulce Pinzon
2019
In - ouï.e, performance and poetry, ALASKA, Rennes-FR
Curated by Collectif Uklukk
Festival Excentricités , ISBA Besançon et Frac Franche-Comté – FR
RESIDENCIES
2023
The Art Critic’s Archive, Research and Creation Residency, Rennes
2022
Fieldwork Marfa, Marfa, Texas-US
Coup de Pouce, Le Bel ordinaire, Pau
2021
Tempête, Finis Terrae, Ile Stagadon
2020
Hôtel Experimenta, Salon-la-Tour
Les Chantiers, Passerelle, Center for Contemporary Art, Brest
2019
Residency, primary school, Rennes
MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
2021
L’eau d’ici, artistic and educational project, research residency at La Criée Centre d’Art Contemporain and Kunstverein Haus 8, Kiels. By invitation of the collective Uklukk-FR-DE
Tempête, residency with a social and artistic dimension for people in rehabilitation, Finis Terrae and Association AJD, Ile Stagadon and Aber Wrach -FR
2019
CRLT, collaboration with Vincent-Michael Vallet and the company Pilot Fishes, realization and follow-up of a participative process on a choreographic piece in progress, exhibition-restitution, Festival Agitato, Le Triangle-FR
EXHIBITION CURATOR
2021
Transitoire: Point d’équilibre, Les ateliers de la ville en bois, Nantes-FR
Pendant ce temps dehors, co-curated with Alice Delanghe and the complicity of Ann Stouvenel and Marcel Dinahet, Screening: AJD (Finistère), Poush Manifesto ( Paris )
2019
Transitoire: Le kiosque, Rennes-FR
TEACHING, WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES
2024
Orange Rouge
Curated by Corinne Digard et Alexandra Goullier Lhomme
2023
Workshop: From body to object, from object to body, Cyclorama, Rennes
2022
The workshop of experiments, family workshops, 2021-2022, FRAC Bretagne
Conference Professional practices, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne, Rennes,Lorient, Quimper and Brest sites. On an invitation by Documents d’artistes Bretagne
Workshop: The performative object, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne, Rennes
2021
Conference, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne, Lorient
Workshop: The performative object as a vector of narrative, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne,Site de Lorient
Workshop: The performative object in its relation to body and movement, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne, Site de Brest
2020
Conference, Ecole Européenne Supérieur d’Art de Bretagne,Brest
Conference women artists, Before Sunrise x Quinconce Gallery
EDITIONS AND MULTIPLES
2022
Risography, 79 copies, Grand Royal Studio x Média Graphic x L’endroit Edition
2021
Teeesssage, t-shirt, 25 ex, Palette-Palette
An edition at sea, 40 copies, in collaboration with Alice Delanghe, Finis terrae
2020
Pop-Up: Collaborative production and loan of works to play with, object for young audiences, Passerelle Center for Contemporary Art, Brest
Immensity, scarf, 25 ex, Label Phenüm
FAIRS
2023
ARCO, International Art Fair, Madrid - SP
2022
NAFI, Nanjing International Art Fair, Nanjing - CH
Westbund, International Art Fair, (duo-booth), Shanghai - CH
ARCO, International Art Fair, (duo-booth) Madrid - SP
2021
AMT SALON, Berlin Art Fair, Berlin - DE
Westbund, International Art Fair, Shanghai - CH
Beijing Contemporary Art, International Art Fair, Beijing - CH
Frieze London, International Art Fair, (solo booth) Angleterre ENG
Curated by Cédric Fauq
2020
NAFI, International Art Fair, Nanjing - CH
GRANTS
2023
Bourse d'aide à la création, DRAC Bretagne
2022
Winner Prize Art Norac FRAC Bretagne
Winner Gallery Weekend Beijing Best Exhibition Reward
2021
Winner of the Marfa-Hostcall Prize, Nantes
Selected for the 10th Prix de la Jeune Création de Saint-Rémy
DRAC Bretagne grant and support from the regional council of Brittany for the project in the framework of the Tempête residency with the association Finis terrae
Grant to support creation, City of Rennes
COLLECTION
Macalline Art Center, Beijing - CH
Private collection (China, USA, France, England, Germany..)
FORMATIONS
2018
Art Master with congratulations of the jury, School of fine arts, Rennes - FR
2016
Art Licence with congratulations of the jury, School of fine arts, Rennes - FR
OTHER
Co-founding member association B612
Board member Finis terrae
Board member EESAB
PUBLICATIONS AND PRESSES
Revue 02 Text by Pierre Ruault
OuestFrance Article by Agnes Le Morvan
Le mensuel de Rennes Interview with Julien Joly - N°152
Domus Text by Silvana Annicchiarico - N°1072
Jeune Critique d’art_Yaci International - Text by Henri Guette
Figaro Madame - Chinese edition- May 2022 p.144-145
Mousse Magasine
yyyymmdd
Contemporary art Daily
Comfort Magazine - Chinese edition p.89-93
Art ba-ba
Art Forum
Spike Art Magazine
Art viewer - special feature Arco Madrid 2022
Frieze London Interview video
Artnews- 10 best booths in Frieze London
Ocula
Artnet
Revue opium n°9 Faire corps -visuel p.80-83
Article, Ladies drawing club, revue n° 11 «Screening Sculptures»
Hostcall 2 interview vidéo
D’excentricité(s), 10 ans de rencontres étudiantes de la performance, Aurore Desprès
Moussemagazine
L’Observatoire Magazine
Artistes Manifestes
Contemporary Art Daily
Art Viewer
Point Contemporain, interview with Pierre Ruault
Documents d’artistes Bretagne, Interview vieo
Re-ox, Fan-magazin, Exhibition catalog, p16
Cosmorama, exhibition catalog, published by the Museum of fine art, Rennes, 2018
Kostar magazine, number 57 October November 2017 p.49
Fanny Gicquel