________ POLDER II

POLDER II
with Antoine Boudin, Louis Gary, Adrien Goubet, Laurent Le Deunff, Laura O’rorke

→ Parasitic presence of the objects in the other programmes in 2015, resulting in a retrospective exhibition from 21 January to 20 February 2016.

❝ By presenting works that refer to the functional and no longer only aesthetic objects, this format plays on the relationship between artistic value and use value.
The “exhibition” consists of two different temporalities. The first mode is a discreet insertion in previous exhibitions and in the gallery space.
For each exhibition, a piece produced for the future Polder is already present but in an indistinguishable way because it is linked to its use value.
At first, the object has an ambiguous role because it has a function other than that of a work of art: whether it is an office or a library, a coffee machine or a display, it clandestinely infiltrates another programming.
In a second time, the production of these objects is made public on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition which, by disconnecting them from their function, will bring those objects into the art-fields. ❞

The inaugural Polder exhibition, presented in January 2014, had no other restriction than the programme statement: objects, designed by artists, appear in Glassbox’s space during events and exhibitions by other artists. Possibly common, they are not museographed, no cartel, no speech, no escort who can designate them as a work of art. They creep into the daily life of space without being distinguishable. The successive appearances modify the morphology of Glassbox without being seen as a work of art, the workspace is organized around them and with them, the team composes with, on, under or between the polders. At the end of the invitation cycle, objects migrate from the workspace to the exhibition space, moving away from their use value to affirm their exhibition value. Double spaces, double values, each of these polar couples embodied in the same place: the work and exhibition spaces mingle at 4 Moret Street while the use and exhibition values define the object together. This duality charaterizes for us Polder. In geography, it is an artificial gain of land from the sea. Backfills, displacements, dikes: polders are where they shouldn’t be. They colonize, they move, or rather they are moved: this movement is enough to change the nature of the soil (from marines to land) and this change has no other basis than an intention. Similarly, here, displacement is sufficient to transform the object while it remains identical to itself.

For this second Polder, the principle is unchanged but has a theme: the vernacular. Each of the objects presented is the result of the encounter between a context, the availability of materials and uses: Antoine Boudin, who opened the Polder II cycle, presents a pavilion that has become the banner of the programme, made of cane from Provence, a material available throughout the Toulon region, his workplace and production area to which he gives an insight through the flag with a provençal motif. Louis Gary proposes a multipurpose office sculpture made of common materials, surmounted by the Rosette, a sausage sculpture box, when Adrien Goubet’s coat rack reveals itself as a sculpture by undressing itself from the team’s clothes. Laura O’Rorke’s ceramics leave their role as pencil pots to create a miniature crystallised forest, and finally Laurent Le Deunff presents a workshop stool cluttered with a pipe that has become a pachydermal trunk as well as a dark leather sofa shelter that seems to grow from the black floor of the gallery.

ANTOINE BOUDIN, Pavillon Indiannaire rouge et blanc
This pavilion cuts short current issues and invites you to step back.It is at the same time a Provençal square, Indian motifs, a piece of Egyptian cotton, a cane of Provence, a Mediterranean weed, a work of art, a design piece, a rag and a stick, a “beautiful object” hanging on a wall, a pavilion of the Earth ship.

LOUIS GARY, Traînée / Rosette
Louis Gary responded to Glassbox’s invitation to Polder with two sculptures, Trainée et Rosette. Trainée is a table intended for the work of the association’s intern; Rosette shelters a dry sausage, and accompanies Trainée by using it here as a base. Both have no desire to develop a type of object (table, box); they only propose to be looked at or used, and invite to consider the gestures and things around them.”

ADRIEN GOUBET, Torsade
“>Adrien Goubet offers a set of twisted metal hangers, a functional object invisible to use. First used daily by the gallery team – thus hidden behind clothes – the object is then revealed in the exhibition space. The shape of the hanger, and the structure that supports it, is obtained by a simple twisting action of a steel strip.

LAURA O’RORKE, Le Banquet
Le Banquet is a sample of the 100 ceramics activated by the 3rd and last performance of the Téloméris project.  Referring to Ballard’s novelLa forêt de Cristal, this installation suggests the passage from one form of life to another. The crystallized installation refers to an over-world and evokes the metaphor of time that Ballard evoked in his novel: “The icy landscapes of The Crystal Forest are essentially landscapes, sublime reflections of a depopulated soul in search of absolute rest, fleeing the noise and fury of the outside world.”

Polder is a program supported by the DRAC Île-de-France.

Opening: Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016
Exhibition from 22.01 to 20.02.16

Louis Gary
Antoine Boudin
Adrien Goubet
Laurent Le Deunff

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Point Contemporain, The Other Sight part I,  part II,  part III