The exhibition Theaters opens with a photograph of a building with a dazzling blue facade whose clearly legible sign reproduces the signature of the famous communist theorist Karl Marx. The following images reproduce, always in frontal view, other old cinemas: Atlas, Apolo, El Mégano, Florida… This view of Cuba is that of photographer Bert Danckaert, and can be seen at the Laroche/Joncas gallery.
On the same floor of the Belgo building, the Circa center offers a succession of works of another nature: arrangements of the most diverse objects and materials float, either in basins or in the air. There are so many stations to stop in front of that you have to be careful not to bump into them. Gravity organizes chance exhibits the delicate art of Maude Arès.
Rejected accounts, distant or recent, will always serve, believe these two propositions. There is no question here of ruins to be rebuilt for future generations. It is the present that attracts Bert Danckaert and Maude Arès, the one that is formulated with the weight inherited from other eras, other times. If their practices may seem very distant, they share the same interest in the time that passes slowly.
Thousand Cuba
In public opinion, regime changes create a wall between two eras. Don’t we say that there is a before and an after? In reality, it’s more complex than that, and unless you bomb everything, traces of the old regime remain. Series Theaterswhich draws up a priori the inventory of the Cuban pre-revolution architectural heritage, is a fine example.
Neither nostalgic nor protesting, the Belgian artist’s photographs capture reality as it appeared before him. His observation: there is not one Cuba, but several. It is impossible to stick to a definitive vision of the country, the photographer Ossain Raggi has already confided to Danckaert – the conversation opens the catalog of an exhibition bringing together Cuban and European artists.
In Theaters, the documented buildings are between the state of abandonment and the relic of which we do not know what to do. Despite this appearance of death, there is life. The monumentality of the architecture responds to people in action, simple passers-by or urban workers. Cinemas have even found a new function, if we believe in the comings and goings between the interior of the building and the street which animates certain images.
The screen of yesteryear has been replaced by the pavement, fictional stories, by the everyday. Do Danckaert’s scenes come from the imagination? Despite white skies, identical from one photo to another, more than one reality is reproduced. Each image is the result of the subtle editing of several shots. Their realism is a beautiful lure: behind this impression of unity of time unfolds a multitude of actions, imperceptible and perhaps less harmful than the great doctrines.
The weight of the present
Small gestures, those that we take with care and without haste, are at the heart of Maude’s installations. Ares, an artist more and more unavoidable. One only has to look at the rudimentary assemblies which multiply in Gravity organizes the chances to see it. Or the alignment of tool objects (by size, by type), which seem to be waiting their turn to take action.
Attending one of the artist’s activations (she will do several, especially on Saturdays) allows us to better understand her almost passive relationship with her sculptures; it is the latter that dictate the rhythm of the gestures. Ares has no authority, except to pour water into containers, small jars or large basins, as we do to water our plants.
Each module is a microcosm where falsely inert organisms coexist. Here is a network of found and manufactured materials, each part of which seems both to influence its neighbor and to depend on it. The favorite material (clay) is constantly changing. The constructions, sensitive to the slightest addition, to the slightest breeze, live on precariousness. Too much weight and everything changes.
Time thus manifests itself on several levels, including with the objects spread out on a carpet like archaeological finds. All this material heritage, unimportant to most of us, takes on great value with Maude Arès. The attention she pays to him, the importance she gives to his presence, to his ability to act (her agency), speaks eloquently of all these dilapidated worlds left aside when you run on speed and to novelty.