Loud Object
Camille Brée, CluelesS
4 June — 30 July 2022
There are two locks. I always unlock the top one first, each time wondering why I don’t start with the other – I’ll do it another time.
The open door is answered by a murmur in the room, the familiar one of indistinct humming, pausing, repeating, stammering. It’s the sound of desire, of a dimmed light, a diluted voice. The sound of a threshold.
We can’t take it anymore: the red office chair that leans when I sit in it, the exhausted stool, also red, the folding chair and its indent, the fake leather chair perched on its cold metal legs. It’s the beginning of a long game of musical chairs, stuttering chairs, that I play alone.
Everything stutters these days. It’s part of the routine. Repeating sounds, gestures, interrupted by pauses before continuing the same, familiar trajectory. Turning on the fluorescent lights, turning on the heater, turning on the fluorescent lights in the office, turning on the heater in the office, then the second one under the table, turning on the desk lamp, turning on the computer, the computer screen. The same evening of the same day, the same thing, the other way around.
It’s 0465632525, the mysterious number that calls all the time.
It’s the incomprehensible feeling, the trouble with the invariable, all the time.
When I move, the floor sticks, it squeaks, everything stutters. The stammering steps slip into the rustle that invades the space. Still the sound of desire. The sound of a threshold.
The only way out: to break the stutter with a loud object.
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Camille Brée’s interest in places and their physical specificities is expressed through a sculptural practice. She seeks to produce forms that have the capacity to shape interactions with the body. She focuses her attention on peripheral spaces, exploring apparition and presence. Often playing with light sources, shadows and transparency, her works question the condition of the visible while decentering the viewer’s attention.
Camille Brée delineates the void, the immaterial. And yet, in her work, the hollow is far from nothingness. It invites sensations to settle; it becomes a container. Function thus plays a considerable role in her practice, whether literal or symbolic. Her night lights, for example, do not only light a space or a path, they also accompany the public by their presence. Rather than being at the mercy of the gaze, her works create trajectories for the latter, leading it between illusion and reality; from the familiar towards the strange.
Camille Brée was born in 1992 in Clermont-Ferrand. In 2015, she graduated from ESACM before joining the Dirty Art Department of the Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam) in 2020. Her work has recently been exhibited at CAPC (Bordeaux), Bagnoler (Bagnolet), and Placement Produit (Aubervilliers). In the fall of 2022, she will present her first solo exhibition at Galerie Madragoa (Lisbon) in partnership with La BF15 (Lyon).
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“Being in one’s own world” is perhaps the most accurate way to interpret the word “clueless”. Bypassing pejorative interpretations that evoke someone who is ignorant, “clueless” should rather be understood as the position of the one who defies reality. For CluelesS – the design duo composed by Saloméja Jacquet and Clara Stengel – creates a repertoire of objects for everyday use, intended to solve problems of reality by creating a world slightly out of sync with our own.
Their practice could be seen as a borrowing of existing and common forms, structures and materials in order to better divert them, thus giving them a new destination. However, these various comings and goings, as well as certain detours, resist simple summaries and move towards something multiple. The multiplied functions, the crossing of techniques, the gestures give way to a rich vocabulary developed by these multifaceted non-specialists. Process is read through the object, revealing a way of searching for forms while making them, by responding to an immediate and unpremeditated need. Flexibility – whether in the materials used or in the gestures performed – is the common thread between the works. With CluelesS, a bag becomes a dress; a chair becomes a pocket; a handle becomes a hook. Thus, the users have the choice to let themselves be carried by these shifts, to tend towards a more flexible world.
Saloméja Jacquet was born in 1994 in Paris. In 2017, she graduated from HEAD (Geneva) in fashion design. She notably worked with designers such as Bless and Mariel Manuel before co-founding CluelesS.
Clara Stengel was born in 1989 in Paris. She graduated from the Beaux Arts de Paris before training in woodworking in 2015. Before co-founding ClulesS, she exhibited her work in France and internationally.
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The exhibition “Loud Object” was produced in partnership with the BF15 and Moly-Sabata Résidence d’artistes / Fondation Albert Gleizes.