Monochrome rouge

Numbered pieces of a photo puzzle; each puzzle piece measures 15 x 21 cm; total dimensions: 167.5 x 117.5 cm

During a three-month residency at the La Criée art center, Cirrus walked the streets of Rennes and approached people who were wearing something red. From these encounters, he gathered a number of comments and answers to three questions: “Why do you wear red?”, “What does red mean to you?”, and “How does wearing red make you feel?” Each of these testimonials was accompanied by a numbered photograph of the garment. *Monochrome Rouge* assembles and recomposes all these fragments like pieces of a puzzle. The result takes the form of a tableau, complemented by a book compiling all the responses from passersby regarding their relationship to the color red.

Very often, Cirrus’s work unfolds across two “spaces-times”: there is the ephemeral and spontaneous time of action, exchange, and reaction, triggered within the urban space; from which emerges the continuous time of the object and its exhibition in the gallery. More than just a trace of a process, Cirrus’s works explore the ontological qualities of the artwork. “Monochrome Rouge” engages in a clear dialogue with 20th-century art history by referencing the relationships and tensions between photography and painting: the emergence of photography, the various responses from painting, and its shift toward abstraction until it reached its most absolute and radical form: the monochrome, or the photographic painting that gained prominence during the 1980s. Here, through the creative process that is revealed—its documentation, the relationship to the text, and the composition of the painting (the materials, color and its nuances, and forms)—the experience is placed at the center of the work and does not claim to provide an objective representation of reality.

Alexandra Gillet