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.)
 
 

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                *