The exhibition La trace brings together two French artists, both of them have the habitat at their heart. The sculptures-volumes, true biotopes of Manuèle Bernardi, correspond to the drawings and paintings with human geography of the residences of Frédéric Garnier.
Archeologists of our time, they followed the footprints, collected the clues, cataloged and archived the remains of what happened, in search of awareness in this unconscious mark of the passage.
If the installations of Manuèle Bernardi have a high poetic density, they contain in their heart a disturbing fragility. Attached to nylon threads, these little things flicker happily on themselves, unaware of their meaning. Individually they are only the traces of a past life, of involuntary homicide, together they reform a quivering ecosystem that seeks to protect its center. A new constellation around a visible or concealed star brings back a form of life. The allegory does not stop here, Manuèle protects her installations of a sheet of transparent plexiglass which is reminiscent of the ozone layer.
Suspended in the air by wires that seem too fine to hold them, the No-Made habitats of Frédéric Garnier are heavy weighted by building materials. The oblique horizon, colored with aerosol, does not allow to fix a landing point for these frail huts. They are wandering. The ready-no-made houses, made of these little things thrown, abandoned, then recovered, are the painted images in the artist's retina of the Calais jungle. Thus, the project of a civilization installed on Mars is weighed by the cement pouring from the concrete mixers, objects orbited by the absurdity of these two dreams that intersect without seeing each other.
La Trace
30th of March - June 8th 2019
Manuèle Bernardi
Frédéric Garnier