Ex-change

Reimagining the viewer’s place within the exhibition space is a theme common to the works of Simone Decker and Félix González-Torres. Untitled (beginning) is a large curtain of green and silver beads by Félix González-Torres. Visitors are invited to part this curtain to enter La Criée. Through her exploration of the transition and shift from one space to another, from a time past to a hoped-for rebirth, the artist sensitively evokes the risk of venturing to the other side of the mirror, to the other side of the border.
Simone Decker created a Hunting Lodge, an imposing rectangular structure made entirely of transparent double-sided adhesive tape. Visually, the work captivates the viewer with its interplay of transparency and opacity, as well as with the simplicity of the materials used to achieve such a monumental scale. The work is also striking for its exceptional tactile qualities: by being able to touch and enter this space—which is both fragile and solid—visitors literally cling to it, exposing themselves to the gaze of other incredulous spectators and leaving traces of their passage through the exhibition (footprints, hair, pieces of paper, etc.).

The theme of the human form is subtly explored in the exhibition Ex-Change. Bill Jacobson has created a series of black-and-white photographs featuring anonymous portraits. With superb mastery of out-of-focus effects, the photographer makes the figures oscillate between being strikingly present and fading into the background against a neutral white or black backdrop. Félix González-Torres also created portraits, but in the form of a pile of candies—Untitled (Lover Boys)—intended to be sucked on by visitors. This pile actually equals the combined weight of the artist and his lover. As a symbolic representation of a loving embrace, the work is thus at risk of disappearing through contact with visitors and over the course of the exhibition.

The relationship with others is undoubtedly the central theme of this exhibition. Nan Goldin visually chronicles her personal life by photographing her closest friends, just as Gillian Wearing invites individuals to open up to the artist and the audience through photography and words. Such intimate narratives can sometimes be unsettling and misjudged as gratuitous exhibitionism. Yet there is no doubt that they shatter the illusions of superficial communication inherent in our image-driven consumer society.
Venturing into the unknown is the driving force behind contemporary art. In La Criée, Olivier Dollinger filmed a teenager he met in the city of Rennes. Withdrawn into himself with his Walkman on and apprehensive about the white, bare space of La Criée, the teenager experiences the place through processes of confinement, movement, and confrontation. This particular scenario is punctuated by an action performed by this young man, who starts up a scooter and makes the wheel spin in place. The strangeness of the situation reveals La Criée as both a space of alienation and a space to be claimed—or even inhabited—according to one’s own sensations and reactions.

Christelle Familiari, for her part, is “Asking for Hiccups.” But such a request, made on the evening of the opening, requires a special connection between the artist and the visitor. Christelle Familiari will offer herself to the visitor after first donning a hand-knitted red dress and a hood—garments that will leave only her shoulders and neck exposed. Seated in the space, the artist waits for the visitor to respond to a plea to touch her with their mouth. It is then up to the viewer to reveal their desire to approach the artist and kiss her passionately… 

Ex-Change : qui (s’)expose ?

Larys Frogier