SLEEPWALKING WRITING AT THE ÉRIC MOUCHET GALLERY
Pieces of flesh spread here and there in space. Some people relax, others jump with pleasure, there is only one, greyish, lying on the ground. These steel sculptures, although a priori cold and rigid, are forgotten and, without any discomfort, twisted in front of me. Some of them stare at me, hidden behind their long velvet eyelashes, I imagine them surprised to see me watching them without abandoning me to the same delights. What courage to give in to letting go in this way. This is still impossible for me: I have been sitting in the middle of the works for more than an hour now, trying in vain to distract my anxieties and tirelessly recalling the validity of this experience.
We are in the night from Sunday to Monday, I am alone in the Éric Mouchet gallery and I have as my only company the works of Gwendoline Perrigueux. In the gallery, tonight, I just want to write. A company that I wish to be more experimental than romantic, especially not folklore. For me, it is an opportunity to confront the very specific setting of the gallery, an opportunity to break down the obstacles that can separate me from the works, a chance to take possession of a work that encourages pleasure. All this in a total solitude that I cherish. But in spite of myself, tonight, she bullies me.
Because nothing does, your absence, to you, the reader, is too noisy. So much so that it has been three hours now that I am absolutely unable to let go. I hesitate about the use of the past, the present; about the way I will address you. I’m petrified. Moreover, even alone, I walked into space as if hundreds of eyes were on me, as if the slightest slip would disqualify me. I am thinking of the artist, the gallery owner, the members of this collective, the unknown who will go through this. What about the works in all this? Are they just muses or, if not worse, excuses?
I then try to speak up to fill the gallery with one of my organs and perhaps make it mine more. For this I borrow the words of the authors.rice.s who before me managed to write about the work of Gwendoline Perrigueux. Reading aloud in this way also prevents me from wandering, from not making this space the sofa of a psychoanalysis and from confiding in its walls, which for the moment inspire me with too little confidence.
In this case, my ridiculous ramblings do not advance my work. Six hours already that I am here and the installations are still waddling in front of me with the same elusive languor, the materials used by the artist still crack without detour around this rod, the highlight of the exhibition. There are straps, fur, velvet, holes in everything we would like to stick our fingers into. It is an orgy of languid materials that, sometimes only, stretch to the point where they are thought to be ready to give in. But what intrigues me the most – and this since my first visit to the exhibition a few weeks ago – are these three rooms in the back room, piles of various debris. They are piles of paper troubled by sweat, scattered smoke, glitter that hoped to blot faces when they were still fresh and debris from a glass washed up on the ground because of a distracted hand. These two orbits give them a disturbing human aspect, a little ridiculous. So much so that strange hangovers are standing in front of me, broken from being made of wood. They are my nocturnal companions with mischievous and funny faces.
Eight o’clock. So I would have been unable to forget you. I wanted to satisfy you with my words, sometimes even please you, thus becoming a censor of my own emotions, my unusual thoughts and my fantasies. All night long, I thought about you and too rarely about the works. A doubt full of vanity kept oppressing me, taking me away from my ambitions of honesty and letting go. At the end of this experience, I remember being warned by Gwendoline Perrigueux: “We all pay attention to our behaviour all day long, and people sometimes wait to be on alcohol, on drugs, to say to themselves: “Oh fuck, it’s going to give up on me and I’ll let it go.” But what interests me is to see that, even in the evening, when everyone is supposed to let go a little, people are still on the subject of restraint, control and representation. It fascinates me that this belief in everything is allowed and ultimately… not really. » (1)
That there is still a long way to go.
(1) Arnaud Idelon, « Gwendoline Perrigueux, la fête permanente », TRAX n°212, juillet 2018.
Visuel à la une :
Gwendoline Perrigueux, Jelly fizz, 2019, Performance avec Julien Deransy et Lorenz Jack Chaillat. © William Gaye.
