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29/3/2005

Alain Sechas

Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Jurassic Pork II

Palais de Tokyo, site for contemporary art, is pleased to present a large-scale installation by Alain Séchas entitled "Jurassic Pork II." The installation, on display from 31 March to 5 June 2005, will offer visitors a truly unique experience. There, plunged into darkness and armed only with a flashlight, they will set off to discover artworks on their own. Drawings by the artist that have been hung on the walls, monumental figures set up in the exhibition space, and an illuminated flying pig they are bound to run into form a mysterious environment that is full of stories...

Alain Séchas, "Jurassic Pork II"
"Jurassic Pork II" immediately thrusts visitors into Alain Séchas's mythic world. His little Siegfried does have a hard time carrying out his mission among the strange creatures populating Jurassic Pork! The enthusiastic outbursts of Countess Pornault, the attacks by hordes of swine, the bad advice dispensed by Count Zaroff, or the irresistible charm of Artémiss, all of this is sure to make your head spin! It certainly doesn't help us get our bearings in the dense fog that invades the space…

This isn't Mr. Séchas's first experiment along these lines. Sharp-toothed carnivorous plants in Lyon in 1991, a spider suspended from a thread in Strasbourg in 2001, suspects caught in the spotlight in Paris in 2000-movement, surprise, and the spectacular effect are an integral part of his work and have already inspired pages and pages of commentary. Much has in fact been written about the artist: about the French cat (chat) crouching in his last name, his biting sense of humor that doesn't miss a thing, his comic-book jokes raised to the level of grand master paintings, his references to Lacan and Deleuze, and the presence-absence of the phallus in the whole of his oeuvre.

Indeed, the artist readily lends himself to analysis. He gives us plenty to see, discuss, make us laugh, and often question the very status of what we're in the process of seeing. What is the hidden meaning of that animal that appeared in 1996 and has always figured in his work since? What is it hiding from us or what does it want to show us? Are its big round eyes and the stunned look it sports merely an expression of the astonishment it feels in meeting us? Could it be the distorting mirror of our own human failings?

Alain Séchas likes to work with the straight-forward reading, the obvious sense. Or at least he likes to make us think he does, without revealing the unseen buried meaning. What exactly is this or that bad barroom joke hiding? Isn't it there merely to satisfy our desire for coarse humor, or can it reveal one of the obscure philosophical meanings of the world? Séchas's work is made up of any number of questions in this way. And his cats, ready to fill any and every role, level such questions at us at any time and any place: sex, invective, fantasy, the role of art, black humor, types of social behavior, desire, or the fear of the other. Human failings constitute the very basis of his artistic stock and trade. He cheerfully draws on all that and the material proves quite rich, even inexhaustible. Given over to its libido, surrendering to its basest impulses, flaunting its own weaknesses, his benchmark cat is nothing other than us, viewed from our least brilliant side. Martian of the day to day, sleep walker in Indian file, sexy superwoman, or minor star in flowered boxer shorts, he deftly caricatures us as if nothing were up and he were not to be dissuaded.

All of these little acts of violence carried out against us create step by step, drawing by drawing, one of the greatest portraits of our little society and our little habits that we have ever been given to see. With his characteristic elegance, Alain Séchas tosses that in our face without further ado, a discreet smile breaking at the corner of his mouth…

Marc Sanchez

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An earlier version of the Palais de Tokyo piece called simply "Jurassic Pork" was created by the artist for a solo show at the Consortium in Dijon in 2001. For the Palais de Tokyo show, a new series of drawings and two monumental sculptures have been added to "Jurassic Pork 2." After the show's run, Séchas's piece will become part of the contemporary-art collection of the Abattoirs, Toulouse, a co-producer of the exhibition.
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Wednesday 30 March
from 10am to noon : press visit
from 8pm to midnight : public opening

Palais de Tokyo,
Site de création contemporaine
13, avenue du Président Wilson
F - 75116 Paris

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