SEULS SIGNAUX: Gabriel Leger
SEULS SIGNAUX [sole signals] questions receivers and receptacles, telecommunication and vibrations, voyages to come, cosmos —
and bees’ trajectories.
At first sight, Gabriel Leger seems to have distanced himself from
the archaeological considerations that he is fond of with new works
that all seem to be placed outside of a problematic of temporality. Here there are no ancient artefacts (except for one, The Winding Path, a
spool of Egyptian linen thread), but rather precisely chosen and eloquent materials: iron, copper, gold, wax and honey, bitumen, etc. Part of
the artist’s grammar for the past ten years, these materials seem to tell a new story here.
In reality, the symbolic threads that the materials have woven in the past, now intertwine overtly to question the soul. Several metaphors are used to signify this quest and its various stages; that of transport, for example, with the use of railway equipment, an evocation of the path and direction; and of both speed and the industrial era that is, perhaps, coming to an end. Thus, in a future of anticipation, what better to do with railway sleepers than to fetishise them ? And why not consider a train station telephone as a means of communication with the unknown ? Either some sort of modern version of the sacred instruments of Greek oracles, or an instrument of transcendence
thanks to electrical transmission.
Electricity, conveyed by copper wires that link stars to a bell, waiting for a distant tremor to resonate (Seuls Signaux); that produced by
the interactions of matter, dictating to Heraclitus that it is lightning that governs everything.Transport and transmission lead us to the issue
of passage; to the other side of the mirror, to the constellations, to the opening of an invisible door at the top of a staircase with no steps (L’Escalier de Jaïpur), or to an access to another reality through a vortex (Omphalos).
“As for the world, when you come out, what will it have become? Nothing of current appearances, that is certain ”* is thus the final question before the experiment, a question to which we know not what the response will be.
With Les vases communicants — test flasks on a scale that contain a breath stretched across one year — it is still a question of time, but one that accentuates the subjectivity of human temporal considerations: what is one year, compared to the age of the Earth ? We can also take the opposing view, and recognise in this small cosmos that we are, the possibility of an intimate relation
with deep time.
By fabricating a fetish (Compact Spell), Gabriel Leger invites us to summon something: Yin/Yang dualities of birds facing each other like pieces of a chessboard, or the deceptive appearances of two almost similar decanters, one made of wax and the other filled with honey. But the artist’s use of the bees’production also suggests an eminently positive interpretation. Their soothing presence (on Earth, and in the exhibition) is one that can cure and heal wounds. Thus, making a Yellow Square on a White Background, far from being a colourful homage to Malevitch, actually proposes the perspective of a transfiguration : that of matter through light — an icon of honey.
* A. Rimbaud, Illuminations, XLI, IV
