Lieu Noir

Lautréamont maybe

It is said to be the old ticket office. It appears to be an electrical cabinet as well. It looks like a prehistoric version of JCDecaux panels, a reduced noise barrier, the plinth of an absent (and flat) sculpture. It is in any case a landmark for parking bicycles and a permanent publicity support for the Baths. The kiosk is also a medium for images: it then functions as a frame, as a mirror, as a cut-out (because there are nine parts). By changing, it is almost an open-air art gallery, like other facilities on the neighbouring docks./////// But today it is an aquarium. No one had seen that the object was empty, windowed, filled with dark water, and containing an underwater animal. Aurélie Menaldo scratched the surface and discovered new content: a Pollock in a black place. While the previous photographs may have summoned other spaces, real or pictorial, Aurélie carves into the block and a coloured beast emerges with brilliant reflections, nothing dark. /////// These shapes and colours clearly remind us of a few familiar objects, but it is first of all the chimera that must be seen, a somewhat automated hybrid being, with life in the colours of its head, and bones in its tail. A chimera included objectively in the geometric volume of this new “aquarium” in the same way it is part of our deep imagination: who of those among us has never admired the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella…

Jean Stern

Print on matt paper mounted on a metal support. 117,5 x 337,5 cm