LE VESTIGE D'UN VOL : Jean-Marc Cerino

Based on photographs and drawings, mostly by anonymous creators, Jean-Marc Cerino’s paintings on and under glass form what the artist calls a "shared view of the world." He attempts to restore the world as seen by this "common folk," creating a body of work that is always in the making.

The vestige of a flight... "vestige" is to be understood here in the sense given by Thomas Aquinas: like smoke caused by fire, yet taking on a completely different form. From an event, an image can be born—an image that results from it but finds its own form. Vestige-images are these distinct forms of moments, movements, and passages of reality. To borrow the words of Jean-Luc Nancy, a vestige "bears witness to a step, a walk, a dance or a jump, a succession, a momentum, a landing, a coming and going, a transire"—a going beyond.

For Jean-Marc Cerino, it is a matter of entering the infinite space of images produced by anonymous individuals without hierarchy or classification, without even editing, but more simply strolling through and getting lost in it, like the flight of a butterfly. Looking at the images chosen by the artist, nothing seems to remain of this journey or path except simple, posed moments. And yet, these moments, without tracing it back, nonetheless open up to this flight, becoming vestiges of it.

The vestige of this flight—in the images of the past as much as in the past of the images—gathers and welcomes a weight that, by rebound, cuts through our present.

To stay true to this project, a few pieces in the hanging will change several times during the exhibition. Thus, some posed moments will fade away and new ones will appear. May the exhibition itself reflect the openness of this flight. May it be like smoke, which continues to spread without ever freezing in place.