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BLANCS
an exhibition of a special collaborative work by Marie-France Brière et Barbara Claus
The exhibition runs from November 23, 2000 to January 14, 2001
A publication including a poem by Shauna Beharry complements the exhibition.
As part of this collaborative series begun in 1997, and again with the idea of promoting fertile encounters between artists
of different outlooks, Dazibao has asked Marie-France Brière and Barbara Claus to do a joint exhibition and publication. More than a union of two voices that blend for the duration of a project,
the artists' proposal represents the birth of a third voice that exists only within this collaborative undertaking, since together they have designed and executed all the works brought together
here.
Departing from their respective practices, Marie-France Brière and Barbara Claus have decided to make use of their encounter with one another to explore the repetition of certain familial
actions and myths. Emerging from a stratification of memories, one marked here and there by lapses and gaps, are works that appeal to the visual and the tactile and images that play upon or blend
the personal histories of both artists.
What we have here are photographs that have been reconfigured and retouched, sorts of atemporal and emblematic images of the idea of family, where the featured characters seem interchangeable, permutable
to such a degree that they melt into one another without any fear of anachronism or shifts in kinship, to reside finally beyond any convincing geneology. These notions of doubling and, indeed, of
duplicatas, of striking familial figures, make light of some of photography's inherent qualities. In proximity to these images are two plates of green granite. These, one of which is warm to the
touch while the other is cold, approach the scale of the human body and symbolize, via their tactility, not only life and death but also the sometimes elective affinities of family ties. The reflective
capacity of their polished surfaces ensures that they, too, become images as they pick up viewers' reflections. These two-dimensional works are complemented by a piece executed using a very old
sculptural technique known as mise au point. This work, caught between a possible future and the unshaped mass of its raw material, is as eloquent with respect to the birth of the object as it is
with regard to its absence.
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