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Guillaume Leblon

Site of Confluence

Guillaume Leblon’s installations combine elements as varied as sculptures, drawings, films or found materials and are modelled on a field of investigation: in his exhibitions, works become clues, their association prompting open narratives. The circulation of forms, the effect of time on materials, the relation between interior and exterior spaces, the transition from one scale to another are some of the recurring subjects in his practice. The exhibition becomes the space and the time in which these transfers and transformations cross paths and are concentrated.
For Site of Confluence, Guillaume Leblon approached the exhibition space as an expanse on which is displayed a group of works produced specifically for this project. Inspired by the various materials and objects washed up on the beach by the tide, the lines navigating the ground, associated with widths of folded felt, highlight this manner of approaching space and create a link between the different elements featured together in the installation. The fluctuations that they depict create a certain floating impression throughout the exhibition. Indirectly, they also respond to the longitudinal structure that makes up the upper part of the architecture. The exhibition develops a subtle dialogue between the internal space and the external elements and is also characterised by the significance bestowed upon the presence of the materials used and the snippets of narrative these can generate. Several works, such as Channel (2009), a timber palisade with a form reminiscent of a wave breaker, or the series of large deformed planks of wood, bear the signs of deterioration caused by time and external conditions. A series of large-scale monochrome drawings created with dry pastel, called Cold Water (2009), similarly plays with the variations that manifest themselves on the work’s surface and highlights the role played by nuances in Guillaume Leblon’s work. In the exhibition, each of the objects evokes a specific temporality, to the extent that the installation implies a confluence of different temporalities.
Shown in a second room, the 16mm film L’Enfouissement du crabe (2009) can be understood as the clue on which the entire exhibition is hinged. Featuring a crab disappearing into the sand in slow motion, the film draws attention to the artist’s interest in the questions of traces and investigation. The disappearance of the crab below the surface also echoes the occasionally “subterranean” character of the links that the works develop between themselves, a sedimentation of several narratives.

Credits

Curator:
  • Christophe Gallois