Martin Lichtig

Par les blés
When interior architecture becomes the scenography of an exhibition. An exhibition set up in the manner of a ragpicker with a touch of archaeology about him, a researcher assembling evidence like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. His collection is patient but irremediably overflowing. Then the walls are no longer enough to bear the weight of the evidence, and you have to do one thing: build more. These new walls look down on the old ones, yet they are strange outgrowths of them. In this way, a whole organism has gradually taken shape, one that is easy to handle and indulges in regular discoveries and recurring discoveries.
These articulated sections of wood escape conventional classification. They unfold from the walls, acting as screens, windbreaks, sound barriers, accordion-style picture rails, storage trunks, lampshades, light switches and dimmers. The panel is an interior shutter, fitted with artificial light or pierced to illuminate the works hung on the wall.
In this exhibition room, we discover the world through the work of artists who have set out to explore it: Violaine Barrois, Arnaud Bottini, Amandine Capion and Chloé Chéronnet.
They have brought back a South that is not idealised, with all its ruins and building sites, its impermanence and new beginnings, its harshness and vulnerability.Make no mistake about it, the collection of some of their works is only a weakened echo of the real harvest visible in their respective practices.And, realising that he couldn’t build enough, the ragpicker finally left through the wheat fields.