ART CITIES:Paris-Margaux Bricler

Margaux Bricler, whose past artistic trajectory was close to conceptual Minimalism, takes root this time in the fields of poetic evocation and bringing together around 10 works. The artist uses an aesthetic in which a contemporary, almost Surreal Romanticism blends with many allusions to the iconography of the Quattrocento and the codes of alchemy.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Michel Rein Gallery Archive

Margaux Bricler, for her first solo exhibition presents 10 works belonging to the series “la prose du monde”, the title of the exhibition “un œuf, un caillou, un chat”, originates from a dedication signed in a book. On an almost blank page, a hand left a triptych of names, functioning like metaphorical symbols open to interpretation: An egg, a pebble, a cat. The repetition of notions and objects, which is deliberately present in the exhibition, gives rise to a curious obsession with the role that chance has to play in our lives. From the organisation of the universe to the impossible position of two dice thrown on a tray, everything seems to be ruled by secret laws that the artist’s works can make visible through epiphany. Art materialises itself here as a vital game, cosa mentale, that the spectator must dare to play on his turn. “La prose du monde #16 (403.291.461.126.605.635.584.000.000 combinations)”, is a pack of 26 cards on which the numbers have beenreplaced by letters. The possible permutations between these lettered cards surpass by over one million billion the number of stars in the Milky Way. Amongst this astronomic quantity, just one combination reveals the love story marking the whole exhibition. In “La prose du monde #15 (Euterpe & Tyché)”, some dice made of bone and incidentally rolled invoke an impossible melody on a blank music score. The work most marked by Surrealism in the exhibition is “La prose du monde #18 (an eye, an egg)”. A disparate collection is governed by an object which evokes an egg as much as it does an eye, in an inevitable emergence of Bataillien eroticism. Perched on a sort of tripod of human stature, the egg-eye seems to be personified. Through it we can see, in a wooden frame, a small black volcanic rock, also in the shape of an egg and an enigmatic cliché in which the face of a nude woman is covered by a cats’ body.

Info: Michel Rein Paris, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 19/3-7/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://michelrein.com