André Willot

LA PROXIMITÉ DE DÉJÀ VU
10.09–11.09.1997

André Willot invites us to a kind of inquiry—one whose premise might well be “What happened?”—and to a mysterious affair where the scene of action must be traversed and scrutinized to reveal the imprint of a reality held in suspense, put on hold, kept waiting. Rooted in a certain classicism, the staging of objects—set within a deliberately objectifying installation—evokes a web-like symbolism that brings the emotional image of an organic truth to the very surface of the material. Casting the viewer as a witness, the setup periodically addresses them as if they were a character in the fiction itself. This fiction—whose components must be unraveled—unfolds as a narrative of immediate sensory perception: a realm where doubt is both likely and signaled; where the reflective surface of an object absorbs us while simultaneously erasing itself; and where an image, layered beneath sheets of glass and plastic, demands a redefinition and redistribution of matter and representation before its signs can be grasped. Amidst the familiarity of the *déjà-vu*—rendered mysterious by the material fascination at play—the aim is to rediscover a sense of closeness and intimacy; to capture a moment of tension where the shock—or momentary suspension of consciousness—also serves to gauge distances, durations, affects, and senses; and where the *déjà-vu* asserts the immediacy of the moment of reception, of the *déjà-vécu* (what has already been lived). We are witnessing the furtive scenography of a moment that, for all its apparent objectivity, allows the sensory to filter through: a touch of the humor characteristic of Willot, though this time tinged with a darker hue. Are we not, after all, in the midst of *film noir* territory?

Patrice Duhamel