What if, in the words of Agnès Varda, in cinema as in an exhibition, “montage [was] the art of making images dance”?
As its title suggests, the video installation (UN)MAKING-OF deals – not without a sense of humor – with the hazards encountered when designing and hanging works of art. The idea is to exhibit what is never exhibited.
And exhibiting isn’t always fun. Not everyone is lucky enough to have an assistant or a technical team at their service. “Putting on an exhibition means spending a lot of time solving problems: choosing what to show, how to frame it, how to use the space, getting the right tools to drill holes in sometimes recalcitrant walls and avoiding trips to the DIY store…
Marcel Bataillard and Benoît Grimalt therefore chose to play with the challenges of setting up the exhibition using video.
To begin with, they filmed the entire preparation process, right up to the hanging of Bataillard and Grimalt’s own work (drawings, photos). Once the exhibition has been set up and the film sequences shot, everything is taken down.
The two artists then edit the “making-of” video. Finally, they show the film (UN)MAKING-OF in the very place where the exhibition was set up.
The space is empty, there’s nothing on the walls, nothing to see except the video projection. The exhibition is set up for the sole purpose of being filmed.
It’s a different way of (un)making a work, while showing the public behind the scenes of an exhibition and shaking up the myth of the artist who twiddles his thumbs waiting for inspiration.
“Doing and undoing is still creating.”
Some crucial questions (potentially) addressed in the video:
This finished drawing, how will I hang it?
Should I frame it? Will there be enough works to satisfy the public? Or too many? Won’t this little photo look ridiculous in this oversized space? Will the nails be strong enough to support such a heavy frame (we hope they’ll last at least as long as the vernissage)? Should we use dowels?
Won’t the yellow Patafix stain the white wall? Are the works properly aligned? Will I need to buy a new cutter? Wine or sparkling wine for the opening buffet? Will the exhibition be ready on time?
