One person

A map of Rome's metro, or Brussels', or even Namur's (they must have a project like that in the pipeline after the elections). Cities know how to be sprawling. To get a grip on them, you throw a metro over them. It's thrown in where the city has been scattered, where it has spread out anarchically. The metro tries to restore order to all that. The subway is for touching a point on the map. You reach out to grab the pear at the end of the branch. The hand wants, the hand desires at all costs.

A map of the sky is drawn, perhaps even a playground for palmistry. It's said to include a whole network of roads we're likely to use. Type E411, exit 10. They say it's all perfectly geometrical, like a snowflake under a microscope. But as it happens, we don't have the benefit of hindsight. We don't have Google Maps in this antediluvian age. If there's a needleman or needlewoman in the room, we'd love to hear from you. Does destiny follow the lines of the hand, or the lines of the metro? Are we puppets manipulated by some invisible force, or do we have to lift everything at arm's length?

A road map unfolds, a sheet of calculations. These are places I've been, but it's not a self-portrait. It's an account of points in space where it's possible to be, temporarily, or for longer. An individual Y lives in/is from a place X. To what extent is individual Y defined by point X? If by any chance individual Y spends more time in place Z, does he become that place Z instead of the point X that was originally supposed to define his identity? And if so, when does this happen, and if not, why not? And if X and Z go together, who plays what and when?

When in doubt, go to Rome. All roads lead to Rome. But when you get there, you're in for a shock. The hands are spinning wildly. You can't find Rome. It's down there, up there, to the left, to the right, in front, behind, underneath, above, there if I'm there. She was there yesterday. Maybe she'll be back tomorrow. Obviously, she's not here. So what should we do with you?

Between us and Rome, there's a ring road, a freeway that goes all the way round. We have to cross this circle. This circle of fire. You have to go to Décathlon to see if they sell seven-spot boots to do that.

Photographs: Francesca Pascarelli

First sign
First prize
First come
First idea

Last cry
Last gesture
Last word
Last stand

First and last time

(Last rain)

This exhibition follows a two-month residency at the Ferme-Asile art center in Sion, Valais.

The first idea was to organize a discreet parade through the neighborhood. We planned to carry metal beams on our backs, to evoke the conquest of the mountains. We envisioned ourselves descending roped to the edge of a stream. We imagined wrapping the trees in wrapping paper. It was almost Christmas. The fad was to stick little drawings of flowers and chalets on the door handles of newly-built buildings. At the risk of our lives, we would have gone down to the banks of the Rhône to stick portraits of a worried Spilliaert in the ground. Later, a project for an open-air exhibition in the cement garden built over the freeway through Sion was fantasized. Metal slats would have suggested slopes, or ski-lifts, or tunnels. Magnets would have held up imaginary tales of ascending or descending walks. An almost fairground spectacle for onlookers to enjoy for an afternoon. Characters would have animated these scenes. But all this seemed likely to disturb public order. And yet it was intended as a tribute to it. The gesture was therefore brought back to its proper measure: domestic. Everything took place clandestinely in the space of the apartment that had been allocated for the stay. In this private sanctuary, everything suddenly seemed to be possible. At the same time, this is what the more ambitious public and private authorities were saying to themselves about outdoor space: to each his own. A metaphor was born for the way in which private and public visions were interwoven.

A long-standing passion for archaeology. Not so much for the discipline as for what it sets out to reveal: something excavated from the earth. It's a passion that seems to be dying out, but which slips through the margins of time to re-emerge in another form. 

Here it is: excavation in the works here. We start at the surface (the real, captured by photography). Then we dig, and paint. Approaching a moment seen or experienced in the hope of experiencing it a second time. Whether it's significant or insignificant, it doesn't matter. Getting your hands on it. Soaking it up, inhaling its vapours. 

Absorbed in this mirage-like archaeology or search for the foot of the rainbow, other strata of activity emerge. Media. News, more often significant than trivial, in fact. We expected to find the most extraordinary in the oldest. But the most recent is imposing its law. So it's like two archaeologies occupying the same piece of land and colliding. They hit each other. Because there's nothing to be done, they're looking for and finding different things

It is said that the bar must be set high. Therefore, the bars are high. But then they say that they are too high, that we need to set more realistic goals. Only Louis, the master of balance whose absence is sorely felt, would know what the right balance is.

Merry Christmas

This is a Greco-Roman exhibition. Once again!

Merry Christmas

Those who say that we see nothing or that we don't see well, confirm that we rarely see everything (in life in general).

Merry Christmas

The nuances of our experience are confiscated. Here go the nuances, to the dungeon! All that's left are the broad strokes. The big guns. There is no need to look for them. We know where to find them anyway.

Merry Christmas

This exhibition is a petition for the liberation of details and nuances, unjustly imprisoned nowadays. Already fifty signatures!

Merry Christmas

This is history painting. It is a large canvas, with an allegorical theme.

Merry Christmas

The style is tired pop art. It is a sub-category of pop art that is still in its infancy, but will soon take over the world.

Merry Christmas

There is always a battle. Here, it is a battle between two regimes of images (two regimes of bananas, one might say). The register of a thesis on the world, and the register of an experience of the world. In the end, it is the register of the thesis about the world that wins. It is always the banana that wins.

Merry Christmas

The only thing missing from this exhibition, as from our banana tree and our work, is the fruit. Be patient!

Merry Christmas

As you can see, there is something for everyone. You just need a big wallet, because not everything fits in a pocket. They all fit in my living room though. If I can do it, you can do it!

Merry Christmas

The banana tree had its say. He stayed throughout the assembly. He gave advice, even when he was silent. He is a promising apprentice curator (who is progressing under Pauline and Rokko's kind supervision).

Merry Christmas

The banana tree said: it must bend. The world is bending under the weight of something, so bend! Look, don't I bend?

Merry Christmas

As the exhibition engages the verb "to bend", in its conjugations of weight, one wonders if it is not Atlas who is invited to the dinner table this evening. This is a change from Damocles and Sisyphus. Those spades!

Merry Christmas

We know more or less when this exhibition started. Well, it started when we felt concerned. Because before that, the story had already started elsewhere, without us really feeling concerned. The good thing is that it also works the other way round: we know more or less when this exhibition ended. It ends when you decide not to be concerned anymore. It's as simple as that.

Merry Christmas

We know more or less when this exhibition started. Well, it started when we felt concerned. Because before that, the story had already started somewhere else, without us really feeling concerned. The good thing is that it also works the other way round: we know more or less when this exhibition ended. It ends when you decide not to be concerned anymore. It's as simple as that.

Merry Christmas

This is an exhibition inspired by the Mexican game of hitting a papier-mâché figure with a stick to break it open and drop the contents. Except that here you don't get a stick. You have to hit with your eyes. And it is up to you to imagine what falls from the suspended figures. It's definitely a lot of work! I'm not sure the Mexicans like this version. Let's talk to the embassy. By the way, this is also an exhibition inspired by the embassy. Of any embassy.

Merry Christmas

I have an American friend called Noël B. who is invited to the opening, but I want to say that this exhibition has nothing to do with her. I mean, Noël can certainly come and see this exhibition. I'd like to see it. But the exhibition (in which there are, however, things to see) is not her business, although she can look at it. That it is even my pleasure to have her look at it. Notwithstanding a similar friendship, there is no connection to be made with someone called C. Noël. The name 'Christmas in general', on the other hand, is concerned. Not General Christmas (who probably existed). But Christmas in general. Which, in general, in the West at least, does exist. Even if they try to make you believe that it doesn't exist.

Merry Christmas

If you are told that Father Christmas doesn't exist, don't believe a word of it. The proof is this very word you have in your hand. And all the other words above your heads.

Merry Christmas

Christmas willing, there is a turkey. Even a turkey. "The artist is cannon fodder," says Delmotte.

Merry Christmas

This exhibition eats from all racks: that is its democracy. What shall I say, its humanism!

Merry Christmas

Damocles, Damocles... What was his story again? We learn that the story of his hanging sword is said to have appeared in one of the volumes (now lost, it begins well) of the "Histories" of the Greek historian Timaeus of Tauromenion. Then Cicero (that opportunist) is said to have read a version of this story (it is no longer clear whether it is Timaeus' or not) in Diodorus of Sicily's "Historical Library". He then popularised it in his Tusculanae disputationes. There always has to be a Cicero to pick up the tab for the people's expenses. A great sign. We only lend to the rich!

Merry Christmas

The Point Point festival is an artistic festival by the association FAIRE DE RIEN which proposes to invest the city of Avranches in Normandy, like an open-air museum. 23 artists have been invited to create works that integrate into the public space and play on their degree of visibility by exploiting the diversity of the urban landscape.

"Pieces of Brussels", 2022, is the proposal formulated in this context. Stampings of details of the city of Brussels are made in clay: fragments of architecture, street furniture, commemorative plaques, cars. These sculptures are then baked and enamelled, and brought to Avranches to be scattered in the public space in a manner that is sometimes ostentatious, sometimes discreet, even secret. About fifty pieces are installed in a 127.5m radius around the Tourist Office, playing with their confrontation with the elements and signs present on site. Is it the conquest of a territory or the timid landmarks we establish when we set foot in unknown territory? Is it an act of affirming an identity or of dissolving it? Is it the ghost of one city in the flesh of another? Is it the mirror of one city in another, since cities are so similar today? Is it a memory, a trace, a historical decoy? Is it a survey, a magical deviation of the flow that irrigates these places? After the end of the festival, the ceramics remain on site, subject to their archaeological fate.