JEAN FABRE
IN VENICE
1
"Jean Fabre's new
work series 'From the Cellar
to the Attic - From the Feet to
the Brain," which he elaborated last year
for the Kunsthaus Bregenz [...],
represented an important step
in his work development. With five
room-filling sculptural tableaus,
Fabre created a mythical work of
horror, beauty and metamorphosis
that was hardly conceivable
in conventional artistic terms
and constantly alternated between
reality and dream.
The installation followed the layout
of the human body.
Five exhibition levels with metaphoric
titles borrowed
from different zones of the body
- starting with the feet
in the basement and ending with
the brain
in the upper level - created a
Gesamtkunstwerk
of mysterious complexity."
(H ART, June 4, 2009, p. 15 - International
Section)
"une salle"
in Versailles -
"une salle" in
a museum...
Filled, up to the waist
of a man, with something :
Gold.
Documents.
Layers of sand.
And on top of it
they've place
a dead man.
If I were a viewer,
I'd try to look for myself.
I'd try to decipher the dream
and give a name, a place and a
time
to a reality
the work points to.
I'd sense the myth,
and in the myth
the truth,
in the truth
my inaction,
my failure to know
and my guilt.
I'd speak of the human body I see
as if it were my brother's.
My brother's
who came to meet me
but didn't make it
through the barbed wire
the horrors
of a bureaucracy
2
I see a room
A room filled with sand
Sand or a mountain
of carpets
one lying above the other
The uppermost carpet is blue :
the blue of a magic sea
The surface is not level -
it is curved,
suggestive of
low, incoming waves
A white rim, made of plaster
a stucco-frieze
gives us an inkling of what might be
the coast a quay
A man is
lying flat on the carpet sea
He seems to drift
on the
incoming waves
Washed ashore, almost
He is naked
He is dark brown
A beautiful brown
The brown of what may be
a dead body
A drowned
man adrift
His soles, light
His arms, stretched
out
His face,
turned towards the water
No chance to breathe
Dead as dead can be
he must be...
How many people
seeking refuge
seeking work, income
a route to what they
think might be happiness
how many people like him
have drowned
in the Mediterranean
in the Atlantic
between Mauretania
and the Cape Verdian isles
today
this week
last month?
Ah yes, you say
consult the statistics
A.W.
(The poem attempts to echo a single "salle" (or "room") with an installation
by Jean Fabre. The installation is part of Fabre's 'Gesamtkunstwerk'
shown at the 53rd Biennale in Venice.)
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