Perspective 1

polyethylene tarp, felt, 475 x 770 cm

Marie-Jeanne Hoffner’s work originates in the documentation—the imprint—of places or volumes, which she materializes through drawings, casts, and maps. These various operations make up a creative process that moves back and forth between the studio and the exhibition space. This research and this way of experiencing architecture aim to place the work in a dialogic relationship with the space that hosts it.

For the exhibition Espace Vital at La Criée Center for Contemporary Art, the artist created *Perspective 1*: a 1:1-scale drawing of an architectural structure traced onto a transparent plastic sheet. The 475 x 770 cm installation divides the exhibition hall in two, like a screen, while serving to connect the work to the space and the works to one another: “Here at La Criée, the drawing is the point of transition between two spaces; it both invites and closes off,” states the artist. Split down the center to allow visitors to pass through, the work crystallizes their movement through space via a single action: that of crossing through it. The viewer is thus invited to perceive a three-dimensional volume—in this case, that of La Criée—through a two-dimensional installation. The work thereby offers a new way of interpreting space by substituting the idea of physical relationship for that of depth.

Marie-Jeanne Hoffner’s work employs shifts—in geometry, flatness, materiality, transparency, and so on—to explore our relationship to place, our experience of it, and the way we perceive it. “How do you shift a space—or the memory of that space? It’s a matter of returning to the origin, a form of solipsism: what I feel determines my own perception of reality. In this logic, reality is nothing more than what I feel. The paradox lies in this: I carry a certain idea with me, like a souvenir photo that I store in a neutral place. The more or less successful adaptation of the installation is already a matter of interpretation.”*