Gianni Motti

For his show Think Tank at La Criée, Gianni Motti produced a radical installation within the art centre: 17 000 cobblestones, not united, are covering all of La Criée’s ground surface. The absence of juncture composes a floating ground and conferes to the visitor a feeling of instability while he/she strolling around the space.

Work and public are standing on the edge. Dense, solid but also sober, precarious and slightly unsteady, the installation puts into question different topics such as the absence of commitment, the prevailing and necessary uncertainty in a global context. The work plays on the paradox between naked walls which generate a feeling of vacuum and the ground saturated by cobblestones, paradox revealing the missing of critical thought.

The installation also questions the places of the artist and the art institution regarding the meaning and practice of working. Indeed, Gianni Motti wanted to produce this piece as a radical opposite to the productivity in art object and industry. Motti’s artistic agenda has more to do with discussion and speculation than with unrestrained productivity, and the installation is a brilliant illustration of his stance: while harking back to the events of May 1968, this is not a work of remembrance or militancy, but rather an interrogative venture in which the artist dispenses with symbolic and conceptual gambits and injects new life into the workings of critical thinking.

Carole Brulard