Where are we at with the “Monde Actuel (Present World)?” The question is as disconcerting as the plastic answer given by the artist in his first solo show at gallery 22,48 m2.
“The Monde Actuel is a paradox.”, as we can read: “the Monde Actuel is an ongoing process, a space that contains others, an organic mechanism which never stops.” This is an initial line of thought for art works that borrow their vocabulary loosely from the history of Minimalism, based on living matters derived from fermentation.
The “Monde Actuel” is a living space, a molecular area of biological encounters, or even a lab in motion. Just like all thought, like all leaven of the mind. The Pains (Breads) series takes this idea literally: to create these sculptural wall works, Nicolas Boulard uses slices of real bread as his pattern, enlarging them excessively to better capture their cellular movement and the process by which they are made. Several layers of poplar wood, hollowed-out by hand, are then needed to expose all the cavities and slopes, thus creating this dynamic architecture. The idea is to use a whole loaf of bread cut into slices as a model, just like Albert Einstein did to explain the theory of relativity: the bread is the space, the slice is the time.
Thus, all around you, the shapes are alive. Just like the Stilton wallpaper, based on the landscape design of a piece of English blue cheese. Likewise, the wallpapers in the Penicillium series was created using five layers of natural felt, show an instant capture of a truly organic battle: the fungal sowing of the dairy mass with penicillium, the origin of Roquefort cheese. The fungus will develop, forming an all-over decomposition, from white to blue, here stopped in its tracks by the longitudinal slice.
The use of pure wool felt naturally places these artworks in the wake of Robert Morris (in his relationship to the Informe), or Joseph Beuys (for the natural, intrinsic properties of the material). There’s a touch of Matisse as well, in terms of the cutting; and a touch of Klein in the hollowing out. But above all, Nicolas Boulard is thinking about the Nymphéas (Water Lilies) cycle, Claude Monet’s ultimate work, painted largely during World War I. What lies beneath the apparent calm of the floating water lilies? The eye will be looking for the answer to the mysteries of the present day as it wanders through these carvings, these cracks and these appearances. And you’ll also have to learn to play the trompe l’oeil game with art history: Giverny becomes a piece of landscape in the truest sense of the word, just like Soleil levant ( Sunrise), a sample and capture of the surface of the sea in Le Havre.
A leather jacket, worn by a mannequin without a body, now bears its trademark
—“Monde Actuel” a perfect anagram of Claude Monet.
at 22,48 m2, Paris
until December 21, 2024