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UN FAIT DE PEINTURE
An exhibition of Monique Bertrand
The exhibition runs from March 16 to April 16, 2000
After her Mémoires du dompteur de puces (Memoirs of the flea-tamer) earned her broad recognition, Monique Bertrand’s
art took a distinct turn toward installation. The works that followed all depict the unending and unresolved conflict between, on the one hand, a death wish, operating silently and nourished by
a troubled lucidity and, on the other, life impulses that fiercely demand renewal. The result is a disquieting posture, oscillating between shadowy zones and the poetry of fantasy, a vision of the
human condition at once controlled and tinged with melancholy.
The current exhibition, with its many pictorial echoes, combines three works: Crooked Cross, Monstres\Saints (Monsters\Saints) and Un fait de peinture (An Act of Painting). In all three cases, the
assembly — the juxtaposition of parts, supports, matter and materials — is rendered visible, prompting a sensory, organic, almost physical construction of meaning.
In Crooked Cross, a large piece of luminous flesh hangs from a hook, which pierces the skin to reveal a glimpse of internal fibres, like stuffing about to pour out. Near the wound, and above a cross
strangely attached to the flesh, the disconcerting glint of an eye draws our attention. The wounded form, life-size, faces the viewer directly and seems to leak toward us, while bits of spray are
frozen on the image, as though pinned to the spot.
With Monstres\Saints, which is composed of three pieces, Monique Bertrand tackles human representation for the first time. By means of a photographic documentation casting a medical gaze upon the
flesh of clinical subjects suffering from severe deformities, the installation seeks to transcend an aberrant fate. Monumental naked bodies, almost twice their actual size, are presented frontally.
Enclosed in massive steel cases pierced by plexiglas windows with scarred surfaces and surmounted by magnifying screens, the figures balance precariously, leaning dangerously toward the viewer.
Finally, Un fait de peinture, in counterpoint to the preceding works, is based on an absence of iconography, while retaining several symbolic pictorial phenomena. Canvas, deep black photographic
paper with thin cracks, copper-covered steel plates, and reflecting strips of plexiglas and neon are gathered together in an elliptical site. The viewer, seated in a designated spot, can make out
barely a diffuse luminous vibration, a vacillating reality, a kind of confrontation with the fragility of the visible.
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