memoiremiroir

 Carl Ander | Static Motion (LL’Editions, 2025)

Céline Bodin | The Mirror of Aphrodite II from Venus Variations, 2020-2024

“I was seated on a platform suspended 14 feet above the floor. My hair was braided and my face was covered with red body paint. Four 500 watt movie lights were placed around me facing the front entrance of the space. My voice was amplified by three speakers. As people entered the gallery, I repeatedly yelled at them, ‘Get the fuck out, get out immediately!’ Because the sound was very loud and contained high frequency feedback, most people left quickly.“

Man Ray first conceived this piece in 1927 in the spirit of the Surrealist sculpture, in which objects were freed of their names and elevated from their status as mere cultural artifacts to that of art. Its title is derived from a quote by Friedrich Engels, one of the founding philosophers of communism, that was reproduced in capital letters on the cover of the December 1926 volume of the Surrealist group’s magazine, La Révolution surréaliste. Engels said, “What these gentlemen lack is dialectic”; Man Ray clarified, “what we all lack is imagination.” Man Ray did not explore the psychoanalytic roots of personal obsessions and fantasies like his contemporaries, who were profoundly affected by the ideas of Freud. His objects were not “objects of desire,” but rather, in his words, “objects of affection.” The lightheartedness of the artist’s message is conveyed both by the delicate, ephemeral bubble, and the whimsical act of blowing bubbles.

Terry Winters - Event Horizon oil on linen - 1991

Carrés de couverture de survie collés sur la vitre

When Camp Dunlap, a World War II Marine training facility near Niland, California, was closed in 1946, all of the buildings were completely dismantled, leaving numerous cement foundation slabs in the desert. Almost as soon as the government abandoned the site, “snowbirds” (campers from northern states in recreational vehicles) began to winter on the slabs, even though no running water, electricity or sewage facilities were available. Today at least five thousand snowbirds arrive each winter, and a few have become permanent year-round residents, despite summer temperatures that can reach 120 degrees. The snowbirds come with motor homes costing half a million dollars and they come with tents. Over the years, a true self-governing community has arisen, including a mayor, the Slab City Christian Church (in a trailer), the Lizard Tree Library (used paperbacks on an honor system), the Gopher Flats Country Club (gravel greens), the Oasis Social Club (combination meeting space/junkyard), a CB radio station (one half hour of purely local news, nightly at six p.m.) and the Range, an outdoor nightclub built by “Builder Bill,” complete with stage, lighting, bar, communal outhouse and several rows of salvaged airliner seats. The Range takes its name from an active bombing range located a few miles away, which makes the sight and sound of F-16 sorties a part of life at the Slabs. Moira, the Queen of the 2005 Prom at the Range, never got to go to her high school prom. From the portfolio, Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, 1982–2005

Tracy Emin

Collection Tate              

From ‘Meteor Orbits and Dust’ (2014)

Marisa Merz, “Untitled” (detail) (undated), unfired clay, paraffin, copper wire, thumbtack, metallic paint, dried leaf, alabaster, plastic, paper, plaster, paint, graphite, colored pigments, metal coin, gold leaf, metallic pigment, pastel, and colored pencil, metal table, heads of varying sizes (courtesy the artist, Fondazione Merz, and Archivio Merz. Photo by Renato Ghiazza)

Francesca Woodman, 1975

Hélène Delprat, Connaitre c'est démolir, 2016-2017, Pencil and ink on paper and collage

+ extract , conversation between Léa Bismuth and Jean-Michel Alberola, Artpress n° 431, 2016

[1] vais-je le dire ou pas ? [4] — pas