Valentin

Sophie Dubosc

04 Apr - 09 May 2009

© Exhibition view
After the exhibition "Adieu Berthe", an invitation by Claude Lévêque at the Lab - Labanque in Béthune, France, Galerie Chez Valentin is pleased to present Sophie Dubosc's first solo show in Paris.
SOPHIE DUBOSC

The exhibition at the gallery resembles an entr'acte. The scene is empty, like something is asleep. The spectator is facing a wall which opens in on itself. It partially conceals the intrigue it creates all the while incites to interfere on the scene itself. Like surrealist compositions, the siginifiance is transfigured by the spirit of the thing projects.

The scene is bathed in white light, lingering in an atomsphere at once silent and profound. A wall metamorphoses and stretches, exasperating the original forms in space and time. In the center a pool is filled with a milky and opaque liquid of a depth unknown. The spectator can approach it in search for a form, a movement, but merely discovers his/her own reflection.

The three architectural installations that compose the scene/exhibition create a feeling of absence, like decors awaiting a spectacle. Following the example of the metaphysical compositions of Giorgio De Chirico, the perspectives and elongated shadows evoke in memory of a rediscovered antique. Around the basin, three truncated figues, the souls of which seem to glide in the space. Leaving the figures immobilized, as if leaving all their temporal references to become the oracles of this mysterious pool.

A feeling of disturbing strangeness invades the spectator. Between contemplation and anguish, he/she is no longer a detached observer, but a witness of a dreamlike vision, a hallucination. Facing these figures without heads, these iconic series of severed fragments of the same body, taken by a growing sense of disequilibrium, we slip on the slope of an indefinable malaise. With this game on appearance and ambiguity, the artist plays with our certainties and sows the doubt. The sentiment in our perception and our suggestion her work shows through leaves behind our own sense of isolation.
 

Tags: Giorgio de Chirico, Claude Lévêque