Galleries in Paris

In Glass Architecture (1910), German poet Paul Scheerbart describes point by point (a hundred and eleven in total), what constitutes, between realism and (science-)fiction, an architectural utopia. In such utopia, transparency, in the form of a glass partition working as both a (visual) contact point and a (physical) barrier, is viewed as an ideal that should spread way beyond the scope of architecture and widely pervade (and shape) minds in many other fields.

In a digital world where relationships and transactions are increasingly becoming “contactless”, the omnipresence of screens and algorithms has progressively brought about new ways of living together and (dis)connecting, along with new norms of looking and talking, new forms of voyeurism and exhibitionism. A multitude of filters and masks luring us into a generalized panoptic fantasy (and an obvious organized surveillance) largely contained by the new tools and contemporary uses, which are not without consequences, thus reduces the “opacity” of the social body.

Since 2016, Guillaume Linard Osorio has been using polycarbonate: a synthetic material that is lighter, more resistant and insulating than glass, commonly used to build roofs, conservatories, greenhouses etc. Made of several layers of transparent slates, it provides an intermediate space inside which the artist injects ink with a syringe one compartment after the other. Sometimes, via torsion of the material or a blowing system used as a fixator, the artist diverts or stops the rectilinear drips obtained through mere gravitational effect, which slowly creates very graphic abstract landscapes. At first, this new technique allowed the artist to produce works of various formats he would hang on the wall; but for this exhibition he wants to put these objects back into space, reconnecting with the original use of the material (and his architecture background), in order to experience the “architecturality” of these literally in vitro paintings.

Conceived on site, the device consists of several very large format “painted” polycarbonate slates, like screen-walls forming a space within the space, as well as a mise-en-abyme. Permeable, the piece induces some internal circulation while proposing new – filtered – visions of the space and the other elements displayed. An experience intended to be physical, sensitive, and even psychic, rather than retinal. Surrounded by floating liquid images that evoke sonograms and blur their perception and reference points, visitors found themselves in an in-between, standing on an invisible “critical threshold”. In architectural jargon, the expression refers to the moment when a window vibrates under the effect of certain sound frequency, thus temporarily loosing its acoustic insulation property (1). It also evokes a change of state, a transitional space-time, a space of transformation. Like the device around which it revolves, the exhibition works as an interface emphasizing the space, although thin, between the self and the other – communicating entities in essence, even in silent mode-, thus alluding to several dialectics (inside/outside, introversion/extraversion etc.), including phenomena of porosity. This exhibition therefore aims at reinvesting – and rethinking – what, concretely and affectively, connects and disconnects us.

Anne-Lou Vicente, September 2019

(1)Conceived to interact with the device rather than interpret it, several performances will take place during the exhibition.