AT NIGHT WE WILL SEE CLEARLY
Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Cécile Beau, Rémy Brière, Damien Cadio, Bertrand Lamarche, Charles Lopez, Sébastien Maloberti, Clémence Seilles, Mark Titchner
13 March — 20 April 2013
× 78 cm, photo: JB Ganne / La Station.
produced by “L’Usine Utopic”, photo: JB Ganne / La Station.
On the ground: Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Dégradés 2, 2009/2013, laser print on paper, courtesy of the artist and Art:Concept gallery, Paris. Photo: JB Ganne / La Station.
The night and the changes it induces in our perception of time and space, the dark, solitary night, and at last, the night as a limit between fiction and reality, are at the core of In extenso’s project for La Station: At night, we will see clearly.
This somewhat prophetical title refers to a poem by Henri Michaux from the collection La nuit remue1 in which the author evokes this in-between moment, where the frontiers of the real get dissolved, where certainty makes room for uncertainty, where worry replaces tranquillity, darkness replaces light and where reason lets itslef invade by gloomy doubts.
Shrouded in darkness, the exhibition at La Station will present the works of 9 artists and explore the limits of our being as well as those separating external and internal worlds. A wide suspended block of buildings (Le Haut du Lièvre, Bertrand Lamarche), a storm (Zibens, Cécile Beau), an archaic, pagan and urban camp (Basement Ape, Clémence Seilles) will compose the scenery of this dark night into which we are offering you to dive.
Some time will be needed before your eyes get used to the semi-darkness. Then we will see clearly. This path will be strewn with images. It will be a matter of discerning. The mute images of Pierre-Olivier Arnaud will offer from the start a reading of feeling. The borders of this night will be diffuse, we will stroll blindly, before Rémy Brière’s Black Snows, then, shimmers will crack darkness (Sébastien Maloberti).
We will encounter strange atmospheres, places, clues, fragmented lives (Damien Cadio), the night will be shaken, we will stagger (Ellipse, Charles Lopez) and try to understand, in silence, this hallucinating image, this iridescent mouth, that seems to confide in us a forbidden message (N(I)B, Mark Titchner).
Composed of works entering very different registers, this exhibition is imagined as a lascivious journey through the night where the real might have changed sides. A journey, both calm and rough, dark and light, reassuring and disturbing.
1. « Contre ! », in La nuit remue – Henri Michaux, 1935. The exact sentence is “In the dark, we will see clearly, my brothers.”