Claudie Gagnon

LES QUEUES DE COMÈTE
01.24–03.02.2013
Room 1

Claudie Gagnon’s work Les queues de comète is a truly immersive space consisting of an arrangement of seven structures gathered like an island in the centre of the space. Small-scale pieces, described as “satellites”, are assembled within it. Though the poor and trivial domestic materials, which the artist has become known for, are still in use here — metal scrubbing sponges, rubber bands, dust, hair, noodles, sprouted tubers, etc. — they are not as easy to recognize. Deconstructed, stretched and torn, they float in the almost complete darkness of the room. A space that Gagnon seeks to erase by using a well-known planetarium strategy: remove spatial references to a maximum so that visitors forget the context they are in. In an atmosphere that recalls a cave or an infinite space, objects appear to be strangely animated by a spirit of their own as they tremble and groan in their corner. The viewer is invited to move through an assemblage above which a complex network of wires is stretched. Evocative of a nervous system, the wires are responsible for the light jolts impacting the suspended objects. A slight rumbling emanates from the procession. However, as soon as one approaches an individual element one can easily identify a personal tonality that asserts its singularity and signals its difference from the whole. As one moves through the space, flickering lights appear and disappear recalling natural phenomena such as the light given off by fireflies or shimmering stars. Though it appears bland from far, upon closer inspection the installation reveals a plethora of details.

The objects’ old fashioned and dusty look, the naturalized insects and the traces left by the passage of a mysterious and unknown individual act as clues for visitors, who are caught in this uncanny atmosphere of suspended time in which something may be about to happen. Though there is often a form nostalgia or a gentle melancholy associated with the artist’s works, in this case this is less linked to an invoking of our own mortality, which the artist usually generates through freeze frames in which domestic scenes are transformed into timeless pictures. In fact, Les queues de comète evokes the imagery of ancient laboratories, of a time in which occult experiments and magic, notably in alchemical practice, were considered to be closer to the scientific sphere then they are today. The whiff of dust and obsolete appearances that the display transmits is to a large extent shaped by popular culture’s relaying of these stories which have seeped into our collective imaginary.

Collaborator / Sound designer: Frédéric Lebrasseur