The wood is moving forward… or could it be the “Instant Carpets” that Patrice Carré is making float above our heads? Throughout the holiday season, a strange rotating flagpole, “Sexe-tête,” seems to guide the carpets toward the Criée, as if to make them land there. The little one has just stepped through the door. Captured mid-pirouette mid-air, they thus reveal their qualities as mechanical images.
In the strange acoustic chamber with its six watercolors, a rug is being recharged—with all the lights off—laid across two doors, evoking the magnetic resonance of “In the Kingdom of the Deaf, the One-Eyed Are Kings.” At eye level, the watercolors—projects featuring doors, some completed, others not yet—are displayed. At ear level, four acoustic horns—inspired by the famous Russolophones (1913)—play a quadraphonic composition. The “Dolmen No. 3 NORTH-SOUTH” divides the soundscape and visual environment into distinct sections.
Two other dolmens are featured in the exhibition. In the back, “Dolmen No. 2” is positioned against the corner of the room, forming a small acoustic chamber. Above our heads hangs a piece of flooring cut into the shape of a potato. At ear level, a musical overlay of a looped excerpt from Satie’s “Carrelage phonique” (1917) and a Morse code transcription of a series of games that Rabelais had Gargantua play. Sur la droite, la « Suite patatoïde » mélange dessin, sculpture, couleur, mouvement, et lumière photographique.
At her feet, a giant music box labeled “3.14116” conceals an electric train that plays a waltz from the classical repertoire, performed by Michael Nyman and four other pianists in 1976. This giant music box seems alive and plays the music intermittently.
Another intermittent work is tucked away on the left. The automaton will spring into action when triggered by a foot and will stir the air while whimpering: the wood creaks…
Like “Sexe-tête,” which greeted you earlier, you’ll find traces of the “Group of Agitators” in the horizontal series of photographic notes on a blue background. These assemblages of white-painted matches allow for the creation of drawings in the photographic space, out of scale. Later, enlarged through sculpture, they will become automatons capable of mechanical movement.
In the center of the large hall stands a new dolmen: a large, potato-shaped glass slab rests on an acoustic labyrinth formed by four solid-core doors veneered in mahogany. Here, Patrice Carré presents his vision of “beneath the world.” A few carefully selected Playmobil toy scenes are prominently displayed, accompanied by some pebbles; a farm, a few police officers, a train station, a construction site, and a surveyor’s plot form the outer ring. From the maze, you can see a group of three ghosts near a streetlight (a tribute to Alain Séchas and a nod to “La Pieuvre,” La Criée, 1990). A group of monkeys is frolicking further away, near a tree. Two of them are approaching a natural science classroom where students are studying the Iguanodon. Further on, a castaway is waving his arm from a makeshift raft.
Another music box occupies the other side of the large room. A forest of mahogany-veneered acoustic columns plays a selection of sounds, including the biscuit-eater, the cuckoo, and Bizet’s “Carmen” aria…
Further on, we find the preparatory drawing for “Délits d’initiés.” Created on a human scale (hat and floor), the work was scaled down and multiplied in number; it is accompanied by a few excerpts from the now-classic series “Exercices au pick-up.” Created using a turntable photographed from above—first at rest, then in motion—this Cibachrome series explores language, composition, volume, color, and chance… even the animals from the Playmobil 200 set are already spinning there.
Off to the side, the “Rocket” is in the preheating phase. Made up of stacked giant matchstick cubes, the butane-powered craft is about to take off… Right nearby, a series of six pairs of preparatory drawings for the “Chaud-boats” series. First, impressions of iron soles were made on cardboard, then transferred to graph paper, and the curves were analyzed in preparation for enlargement. This series was the basis for a sculptural floor installation (not included in the exhibition).
Finally, a fountain project (not yet realized) depicted in three drawings in which the artist envisions harnessing the force of water. At the top of a large, watertight wooden cone, a weather vane spins, propelled by water flowing down a gutter into a basin.
As the wood moves forward, the floors float, water flows, carpets are caught in mid-flight, souls are trapped between two sheets of mahogany, hats keep their secrets, automatons stir the air, … and the caravan passes by…
La Criée sends you its best wishes from the bottom of the world—Patrice Carré.