 |
Back To The Home Page To Contact Us Useful Information Other Sites |
| |
Back To The Home Page To Contact Us Useful Information Other Sites |
| Past Exhibitions |
|
François Méchain : "L'arbre de Cantobre" François Méchain has made a life-size image of the inner surface of a piece of tree bark spread out on the wall of his studio. The fact that it is a negative dematerializes the image and lends it a feeling of mournfulness. On a piece of paper whose size is determined by the printing operation, he has printed the entire surface of a young oak tree piece by piece, using the tree like an ink roller. Two prints, two kinds of image : the photograph, taken from a distance, on the one hand; the direct contact of bark on paper on the other. An image of the inside, an imprint of the outside. The "recording" is done. Now for "filing away": piles of dead leaves are stored between glass plates and tied up with string like a heap of old newspapers. Next we have "sampling" : views of details of the bark, blown up so that all that remains is the grain of the photograph, alternate with flat surfaces strewn with sawdust and ground bone. Filmed on closed circuit camera, our own image dissolves in a televisual "snowstorm". Tree dust...human dust...the dust of the image. The installation functions as a tautological labyrinth whose constituent parts interrelate tirelessly, coming together in a celebration of absence. Even the eponymous tree in the garden outside is "absent", as it cannot be seen from the exhibition space. François Méchain stands apart from other artists who have placed nature at the centre of their work : as a photographer, he approaches both medium and motif. The way his in situ sculptures are placed within the landscape is determined by a photographer's eye; for him, a negative is nothing more than a promise. It is not surprising that the main subject of this memento mori is arguably the photographic image itself. Colette Garraud |
|
|