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23/2/2007

Virginie Barre'

Collections de Saint Cyprien, Saint Cyprien

Slumberland

Virginie Barré’s "Slumberland" exhibition at the “Collection de Saint Cyprien” - reference to “little Némo”, the cultish Winsor McCay (1871- 1934) comic strip hero - explores the realm of dreams. After having bent down to pass through a little door, the tour begins with a sleeping dummy, from which the exhibition’s dreams seem to flow. But would never have been a child to imagine that only fairies inhabit the night. On the contrary, it is a world sometimes bizarre or even threatening. As in comic strips the characters play dirty tricks on one another. One can never be sure of anything at night, and monsters can turn up around the bend of an otherwise marvellous road. For dreams are somewhere between reality and illusion. Virginie Barré uses her favourite techniques (drawing, pictures, dummies and setups) to allow the visitor to rediscover childhood at every step.

Concerning her methods, Lili Reynaud-Dewar says : “When one scavenges objects and second hand clothes at provincial flee markets, extracts characters from the depths of pulp fiction comics and aged TV series, that the deviant and reeling atmosphere of Brittany’s carnivals is recreated, fake corpses are made of scotch tape and panty hoses stuffed with newspapers, when pictures of travelling old American bums or of strange and shabbily dressed children are retouched, and so much more, one connects with the forgotten fringes of popular culture, that untamed and repulsive peripheral area, base of a democratic art, wilfully kitsch, and “strangely disturbing”.

The characters are silent and it is hard to guess what to expect : are they friend or foe? What of the striking old Indian, crouching in darkness, apparently calling out to mystical powers? Treating an exhibition like a dream, Virginie Barré forces us to accept a new reality, overtaking our usual one. Here, the itinerary’s temporality is that of a dream, inviting us to slower moments, multiple approaches and the possibility to look back at what disturbs or makes one wonder. Yes, we are condemned to sleep every night – or almost, condemned to lose the control of our thoughts for very long moments, that overwhelm us.

Virginie Barré’s exhibition plunges us through the looking glass, or more exactly, she leads us through the unbelievable places explored by little Nemo as soon as he closes he eyes and until he falls out of bed – scared to death most of the time. The beauty and softness of Virginie Barré’s creations encounter the most disconcerting monsters. These aspects already present since 2001 in the artist’s work, here combine to form a décor sprinkled, dreamlike, in the manner of magic lanterns projecting marvellous pictures on the 17th century walls. Sébastien Planas

Virginie Barré was born in 1970 in Quimper (France). She lives and works in Douarnenez (Brittany). Public collections: Collection de Saint Cyprien, France, FNAC, la Défense, Puteaux, France, FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen, France, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, France.

Collections de Saint Cyprien
Place de la Republique - Saint Cyprien

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