La part des choses, episode 4

From Point to Point / Philippe Pannetier Gallery – Nîmes.

For episode four in the series of La part des choses, we wish to do the opposite of our previous propositions: i.e. exhibit primarily sculptural works with an accent on minimalism. This time it seems interesting for us to present things – things being defined as material, objects, primary matter… in a raw and almost brutal manner.

If there was a tangible silence apparent in the works of the first three LPDC episodes, these are substituted with forms of energy and network building which involve Galerie Phillipe Pannetier. This involvement is not limited by the conventional “frames” of the exhibition (pre-opening construction time, gallery opening hours, lighting of the pieces etc.) but amuses itself with shifting, contradicting and interrogating them.

Fabrice Gallis “shifts gears” and takes control of the physical gallery space, interfering with traditional exhibition codes. The actions he carries out are almost invisible, and for LPDC#4 he creates a “second gallery” which functions like a zone of interference between the physical space of Pannetier Gallery and Charlie Jeffrey’s work. In this zone, he arbitrarily imposes his own codes, values, frames and constraints. Gallis sets a perfectly autonomous system in motion, powered by several car batteries and activated at thirty minute intervals. Lamps, guitar amplifiers, a hot-plate; they all run on their own energy, and comprise a complete coherent system designed to “run out” (when the batteries exhaust themselves) at the end of the exhibition. This programmed death, as ebullient as it is inevitable, contains tacit references to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zones (T.A.Z.) and other pirate utopias (by nature ephemeral) destined to “interfere with the flaws of the network in an effort to constitute a favourable terrain”. Within this animated universe, his own works (SMS sender, ultra light record player, lo-tech robotised pieces of wood) come into contact with other forms, originating from a entirely different protocol: that of Charlie Jeffery.

Using studio based contingencies; the manipulation, production and recycling of forms, Charlie Jeffrey creates artistic principles which mix pragmatism with absurdity. Taking cellular division as a paradigm, he has notably reduced a considerable  number of objects (chairs, photocopiers) to splinters, which he reconstructs or mixes together. In a spirit which could be described as trash, tinted with humour, he works towards hybridisation.

For LPDC#4  he presents Half way house for nothing, three generic forms (chair, table, wall), intended to produce a specific number of different combinations each day, over the duration of the exhibition. Jeffrey has a desire to experiment with the potential of simple motifs to generate multiple forms, and following this cerebral concatenation he proposes the production of one wax sculpture per day. He first used the wax for moulds in his studio, but here it enables the creation of chaotic forms which result from a repetitive identical gesture (pouring hot wax into a container of water).

These wax sculptures are as unpredictable as the billowy lava masses formed by the eruption of volcanos on the ocean floor, which are immediately set by the glacial water. They constitute a catalogue of forms, sometimes grotesque, sometimes seductive, and emerge from a precise protocol; the curious mélange of a hybrid culture that is equally conceptual, expressionist and naturalistic.

In extenso