REVIEWS.

Gravity’s Démodé And Newton’s A Bore

There is an act inherent in the inventive nature of mankind, a force integral to the imagination – defiance. To defy: man’s great amusement with his world. We go up when really the world just wants us to stay fixed on the ground; we go through when it wants us to go around; we perennially go further than the laws of nature would have it. One asks, why? Why walk across a tightrope 500 metres between the Twin Towers as Phillipe Petit did in 1974? Probably because somewhere within all the defiance – of logic, gravity’s desire, the expected or difficult – lies a smile, a root of a fledging sense of joy.

Sylvain Marchand’s work, I would posit, is nothing if not defiant, as well as at the same time enjoying its own original playfulness. Throughout his body of work, rooted in the ostensibly rigid material of concrete, are forces active in nature – gravity, lightness, buoyancy – which are coupled with decidedly man-made ones, whether that be the inflation of air-beds, the mixing of concrete mix with sand and water, the technology of UVA lightbulbs.

Turning Hard (2007) is indicative of this, a work that typifies for me Marchand’s penchant for mortar coupled with wry ephemera, bringing us into a world full of nature’s simulacrum. A mound of mortar holds up, against the object’s own desire for the contrary – against its own physical nature you could say – a wooden pole, on top of which balances perilously a black bucket filled with ten litres of water. Suspended and suspending: inside a little rubber duck smirks from his perch in the middle of the room. The rigidity of the mound of mortar finds its opposite in the precariousness of the bucket of water. And both me and the duck are left waiting for something to happen…

It is this moment, when the viewer walks into the exhibition space and finds Marchand’s work in front of them, that something very…surprising may happen. Surprising because here is that most dour-seeming of materials, concrete, lit upon by something entertaining, something light. Thomas Pynchon’s title Gravity’s Rainbow of his 1972 masterpiece embodies this dynamic.  This title may refer to man’s most destructive streak in his defiance of nature, but the suggestion of a rainbow, the gayest of natural phenomena, suggests that rocket science has also something of the sublime to it, that it is a sort of spectacular declaration of joy.

All of which is evident in Marchand’s growing body of sculpture – often a performative sculpture pushing his preference for immutable concrete to produce something new or unexpected. A work such as Fuite (2008) is a work that transforms itself due to the artist’s choice of allowing chance and play to become part of the unfolding presentation of the work. Like the startled plastic eye of the rubber duck meeting with the spectator, waiting to see if something will happen, Fuite plays much more definitely on the appeal of balance. Something strange is happening when a wall is demolished by air; suddenly the contradictory image of concrete’s fragility is exposed, lying smashed across the gallery floor. The old adage, What goes up, most come down, momentarily being verified.

But much of the work is not a verification of this adage at all, Turning Hard is there suspended to remind us of as much, as is the lightness Marchand manages to extract or detract from concrete and mortar. There is a distrust, almost, of clear cut binary oppositions in the work. The child’s sandcastle, itself a chateau in honour of temporary play and the passing of time, as well as nature’s, the sea’s, destructive power, are bolstered by Marchand in the piece “Love on the Beach” (2006). Here his sandcastles are cast in concrete, ready to stand up to the test of time. And then there is Wittgenstein’s ladder, symbol of metaphysic’s search for the world’s beginning and end, covered in Vaseline; Metaphysique # 1 (2006) stands poised, cheeky, suggestive, inutile. In short, a Nietzschean act of inversion if ever there was one.

That most absolute of binary oppositions, Life-Death, is not spared either. In Marchand’s mother tongue ‘nature mort’ becomes ‘still life’ in English, an interesting pair of false friends for an artist who manages to extract a certain amount of playful vivacity out of what is so often considered life-less: concrete. Ratatoille (2008) is a work that goes a way in joining these false friends, lost in translation, closer to one another. The separated ingredients of that so very French dish, their bright, colourful skins in marked contrast to the rough, grey texture of the cement block in which they sit.

Ratatouille,2008
Légumes, parpaing

The active nature of the art, the on-going performance of some of the works, is to be experienced in front Ecran Total (2008), a screen of UVA bulbs mounted in front of an image of a maligned, out of place palm tree, reminding the viewer as they touch up on their tan that perhaps life really isn’t worth living if sunbeds replace the real thing. Without the sun after all, the real one, we’re all scuppered. Or perhaps, in our defiance of the sun’s disappearance during half of the year, we do extract a little harmless pleasure, a little extra vitamin D and nice, fake suntan. Either way, one is left with a smile, and that fledging sense of joy.

Ecran Total, 2008
8 neons UvA solarium
Photographie de cocotier sur plexiglass
150 cm x 100 cm