Complex and interconnected, the contemporary world of media is leading us to reconsider how we occupy this tangible yet immaterial space with which we are fusing (“faire corps”, in French) through a mechanism of continual osmosis and intimate symbiosis.
Guided by a desire to eschew a passive approach and actively confront the challenges that lie before us, visual artists Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot have created a powerful, absorbing spatial experience for La Gaîté Lyrique, in which we immerse ourselves in swathes of shadow and rays of light, at turns flicking a finger or moving our entire body. What does their hypersensitive entity, which vibrates and breathes in reaction to our presence, reveal about our current era in symbolic terms? Faire corps is a poetic, polysemous work open to interpretation, which draws on our emotional and sensory intelligence to detect elements around us: abstract connections, invisible structures, imperceptible fluctuations and harmonic unity.
Let’s reach out to it and listen in. Let’s glide through this interdependent universe where the line that separates
us from machines has blurred, giving rise to the idea that technologies are becoming an extension of our senses. The vast, all-encompassing composition in front of our eyes and below our feet combines animist computing and lightweight sculpture, light and sound sources, spatial interplay and a macrocosmic scale, bodily perception and natural phenomena.
In Faire corps, Adrien M & Claire B upend our basic principles and points of reference using an array of different forms and mediums, employing aspects of the performing arts to offer a new perspective on the world. The composite project presents :
- the monumental installation L’ombre de la vapeur ("The shadow of steam", 2018, a work produced for Fondation d’entreprise Martell now shown for the first time in Paris), set to a spatial score composed by Olivier Mellano;
- the XYZT collection (2011-2015);
- Effluve and Core (2020), two contemplative pieces created for La Gaîté Lyrique.
The exhibition is accompanied by series of related events straddling visual art, choreography and music, in which the focal point is the audience.
The exhibition "Faire corps - Adrien M & Claire B" received support from Fondation d’entreprise Martell.
