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Rouge – Red  “Praise you”

“red” is a collective exhibition around the subject of the colour red and all that it implies, evokes, emits! For me, at this precise moment, this colour is synonymous with rupture, and so all of the elements that make up this installation have a link with rupture. As a punishment, I started to write out a phrase by Stephen King in pencil: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” and I repeated it in every way possible, that is from floor-level to a height of 1 meter 80 centimetres along the whole length of a wall. In some places this succession of phrases appeared to make up the buildings of a city.

In front of the wall I placed a mirror on a stand up to a height of 1 metre 20 centimetres, thus you only see your own body up to the top of the thorax, whereas above in continuation of the mirror a rectangle of brilliant white is painted on the wall, surrounded by phrases written in pencil. This rectangle is as wide as the stand of the mirror and reflects the red colour that present in the room that precedes that of this installation and is exactly at the height of a normal mirror.

On the stand of the mirror there is a Discman which provides a soundtrack:

1/ applause from a full concert hall (6000 people)

2/ a text read in a room with an echo on the voice. (alone in a huge hall facing 6000 people):

« You are great, you are great, yes you are, but the rest of the world doesn’t know this news , so tell your friends and everybody, that you are the person who can give joy, love, fun, sex and colour of money !  Don’t be timid… »

3/ end of the reading followed by applause, then a song by Joy Division begins: “New dawn fades”

4/ the sound of wind and the applause begins again in a loop.

On this wall there are two photos:

On the left (15cm x 10.5cm) a close up of a bruised thigh, below this there is an inscription: “Je suis bleu de toi” (I am blue of you – in French the word for Blue, ‘Bleu’, is also used for a ‘bruise’).

On the right (39cm x 60cm printed on mirror) a close up of the sole of a foot, in this there is a hole and the photo/mirror is hung such that the hole in the foot is at 1.60 M (more or less head-height).

After this wall (when one advances through the space) a roll of construction site barrier tape is attached to the wall, below this a text (A4) is pinned.