EPHERMERAL INSTALLATIONS LEAVE ME PUZZLED



Today Gianni and I went to a modern art centre at the outskirts of Paris called Mac/Val. Neither of us had done our homework so we really didn’t know what we were going to see. Two years ago, soon after this center opened, we visited it. I don’t remember being wildly excited as installations leave me slightly mystified if not cold. These are really contemporary. I do remember having an excellent  bio-lunch and the woman who served us had a brilliant sense of humor which made the lunch even more delightful.

As this center is really off the beaten track, it is virtually empty. A huge, huge space on three levels with this time around, 95% of installations. A new exhibition was also being installed - we should have come a week later!

The first was a video by Jesper Just. «The Unknown Spectacle». Imagine an area of over 500 square feet (5000 square feet?). On the left side there is a screen running the fall length of the space as there is on the right hand side. The video starts with scenes of the Butte Chaumont, so Gianni tells me. Then on the left hand side there is a girl in a wheelchair. We follow her passage across the gardens and then see a rather unpleasant young man staring at  her. The girl returns to her flat and gets out of her chair standing on some of the highest heels I have seen for a while. A mirrored reflection beams in onto her. She falls into an epileptic fit.

A few years ago I would have left the cinema with such a scene. I can remember my own daughter in an epileptic fit many years ago and the horror of it, especially not knowing what to do. (She no longer has that problem)  But this morning, although uneasy, I could take it.

Does the girl come out of her fit? We don’t know.  J.Just is questioning the difference between the real and the imaginary. What do we see and what really do we see?  Disturbing.


Onwards. Installation after installation. I am adding pictures of a few but without the artist’s names which is thoughtless of me. I didn’t write them down and going back into the site when I came home, there is nothing about what we saw today. OK, they are in preparation for a new exhibition but after all....and the doc I brought home was of a former exhibition.

A room with sculpted numbers and word equations on the wall but no explanation.
Gianni and I read different words but not always in the same way.

One painting I quite liked but only one as it seemed to be in leather but in actual fact a collage.
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Then a room which was a load of fun as the installation was interactive as you can see -
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Other strange installations too by a Julio Leclerc.
Not uninteresting as when you «closed in on them» you could see how they worked.

We had not rushed through the museum so it was time for lunch.
Two years later the same woman was still there. Just as charming, just as funny and the food was just as good. 

Her humor took us by the hand as left to go into the gardens and my anti-installation instincts were reconciled by these few statues - alas I could not find the artist’s name/s....









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