Lorraine Thomas
2-9 mai 2024 – EMPRISE
Ten years ago, I conducted the following experiment, and it left a lasting impression: having glued an obstructive surface to a mirror, and looking at myself in it, not finding my face, my attention was drawn to an unknown, dark, and warm area somewhere at the back of my skull. This is a large-scale project…
A small person, probably a child, looks at themselves in a mirror; their surroundings address the space as they seem absorbed by their image. It is an architectural-type assemblage: straight lines, surfaces, a mirror, solid and soft elements, a suspended sculptural form, and words inscribed on the floor. In this exhibition, which brings together new and older works, the mirror is used not, as in its traditional function, to reveal, but rather to disrupt, if not prohibit, vision: there is the abyss of a mirror, the one that watches, those that obstruct… A crucial element in the organizational logic of the works, the mirror is rendered “non-narcissistic” in favor of the artwork and the space in which it unfolds. The work questions the nature of the object, which, in a sense, is both the physical mirror and the reflection: the mirror as concept and abstraction. The mirror, a spatial and philosophical mediator, creates a distance between the work and the viewer, giving time to reconstruct what has been deconstructed, including our certainties of a sensory perception that would be truth.