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4/12/2008

Bertrand Lamarche

La Galerie - Contemporary Art Centre, Noisy-le-Sec

La Galerie, Centre for Contemporary Art at Noisy-le-Sec (Paris suburb, France), is devoting a solo exhibition to Bertrand Lamarche, born in 1966 and working in Paris. In artistic terms this is a logical extension of the "Cosmogonies" group exhibition of 2006 and Evariste Richter's one man show "The Retina" in 2007. Combining kinetic art and subjectivity, architecture and science fiction, expanded cinema and the unconscious, Lamarche's models, installations and videos embed their physical and mental projection phenomena in reality the better to distance themselves from it. Lamarche has not presented a major group of works in the Île-de-France region since his exhibition at Glassbox in Paris in 2006, so this exhibition in Noisy-le-Sec is a long-awaited opportunity to discover recent works in dialogue with earlier ones the artist approaches from a new angle.

Titled "The Funnel" in reference to the process of formation of a tornado, the exhibition shows Lamarche researching vision, modelling and scale while continuing his earlier formal investigations into metamorphosis via the use of such recurring figures as ellipses, spirals, cones and toruses. In their interweaving of cinema language, sound, meteorology and urbanism, the various pieces on show playfully conjure up worlds revolving around the machine, vertigo and models, taking a visual line that for all its directness remains disturbing. La Galerie's layout has been only minimally modified for this exhibition, which comprises five items: weird and wonderful machines whose simplicity of functioning is in striking contrast with their sheer evocative power. These recorders of reality metamorphose their subjects into versions at once corrupted by the slow breakdown of their perpetual motion and amplified by a multiple mise en abîme both contextual and projective. What the viewer is offered is the depiction of a displacement or splitting of reality into fantasised, fictional "otherness". One of the fictions presented in the exhibition belongs to the domain of "architecture on paper": caught in a time warp, a model for a real project is infiltrated – contaminated even – by projects nobody has commissioned.

"The Funnel": the works

Réplique [Replica], 2008, is a new installation produced by La Galerie and already shown at the Spring in September festival in Toulouse. The first version was recently acquired by the FRAC Centre (Regional Contemporary Art Collection) in Orléans. In a darkened room a beam of light is reflected by a mirror-paper picture distorted by the pressure of two rotating styluses, with the slow movements of the distorted mirror being projected onto the wall. Involving no special effects, this hypnotically ongoing real-time setup plays on our capacity for unconscious identification of forms: wreaths of smoke, insects, etc. Cyclotunnel (A movie set), 2008, is a two-part sculpture made specifically for this exhibition. A PVC cone set on a landscape whose scale keeps shifting suggests both the "time tunnel", one of American sci-fi cinema's time-travel icons, and a telescope. The inside of the cone is filmed in real time in 16:9 format while in another room the projected image, distorted and mechanically animated by variations in the light falling on the sculpture, offers the "mirror" effect characteristic of early video art: a succession of rings in infinite, compulsive movement.

Sans titre [Untitled], 2008, is a sound and visual installation created for this exhibition. Comprising an amplifier and two loudspeakers wired to the arm of a turntable playing a sound-free acetate disc, it intimates another level of reality-reading: the amplified vibrations of the loudspeakers suggest the whistling of the wind in a storm and in turn set up an oscilloscope-like vibration in the wires that echoes a ghostly rendering of the art centre building. Driven by a rotary mechanism, Lobby (Hyper Torus), 2003, is an aluminium-pipe torus turning endlessly on itself. A mix of machine and living organism, this could also be – in the context of a model of an imaginary city – the lobby of a building that swallows you up. The Model (After Nancy) is an ongoing work begun in 1993: taking the site of the train station in Nancy as his starting point, the artist deliberately juxtaposes existing buildings, fictional structures, imaginary reconstructions of the architectural past and projections into the future. Permanently unfinished, the work takes on a different form each time it is shown, and will be regularly modified by the artist during the exhibition at La Galerie.

Bertrand Lamarche: biographical background

Bertrand Lamarche was born in 1966 in Paris, where he lives and works. He holds a degree from the Villa Arson National Art School in Nice. He has had a number of solo exhibitions in France, among them The Double Twin at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Sète (2006), The Plot at Glassbox in Paris (2006) and the Fine Arts Museum in Nancy (2005), Autobrouillard at Transpalette in Bourges (2003) and Vortex at Le Sous-Sol in Paris (1998). Exhibitions abroad include Autobrouillard at the National Centre for Photography in Geneva in 2004. He has also taken part in many group exhibitions in France and elsewhere, Là où je vais, je suis déjà , Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (2008); Absolumental 1 & 2 , Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2006 and 2007); La répétition, la tête dans les nuages, Villa Arson, Nice (2000); and ExtraETordinaire , Printemps de Cahors (1999).
He is represented by September gallery in Berlin.

Press Officer: Mélanie Scellier
T: +33 (0)1 49 42 67 17 - melanie.scellier@noisylesec.fr

Private view Friday 5 December 6 - 9pm
Press preview 5 - 6pm
the artist will be present

La Galerie - Contemporary Art Centre
1 rue Jean-Jaurès F-93130 Noisy-le-Sec
Tuesday to Friday: 2 - 6pm, Saturday: 2 - 7pm
Closed 21 December - 1 January inclusive
Entry to La Galerie is free

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