From 10 January to 8 March 2009 at La Salle de bains, Lyon FR
This exhibition has slowly evolved and been carefully thought through. With his big unhinged compositions, Yann Géraud integrally took over the space of La Salle de bains: a condensation of a five-part personal mythology (Odyssée, Tas, Welcome, Erehwon, et New Original Erewhon House), Erehwon p.o.v. (point of view) has nothing to do with a great deal of decorative propositions. This is rather a forceful deed of occupation, an annexation.
In spite of focusing on physical and tri-dimensional formal aspects, Géraud’s sculptures can first be approached from the realm of poetry, and in a larger sense from the field of literature. The title of the show in itself consists a poetic proposal.
Erehwon p.o.v. is:
1.—a reference to Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon, a satyrical dystopia of the Victorian Era.
2.—a puzzle: “Erehwon” is an anagram combining “no where” (also used as such by Butler), “now here,” and also “new hero.”
3.—a search: the real-life Erewhon is located in New Zealand. (Moreover, this highlights a coincidence or a specificity concerning this country. New Zealand remains an exciting source for fanciful imaginations. For instance, Peter Jackson and Samuel Butler chose it to create a new place which doesn’t require an actual location.)
4.—a constellation: through the genealogy of the word, its strange sounds reveal a tight network of associations, an imaginary and personal field where references surge. Ancient gods, Yot-Sototh, and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu myth, Hasil Atkins’ craziness, news-in-brief, UFOs, Danielewski’s House of Leaves and its narrative as well as graphic creativity, Novalis, Sturm und Drang, Frankenstein’s Golem…
Yann Géraud juxtaposes the term “erehwon,” carrying the odd and epic imaginary part, to the abbreviation “p.o.v.” for “point of view.” Thus, he refers to the viewer’s position, to his experience in the real or physical space of the sculpture: “In Erehwon p.o.v. […] we can only stand inside, as the outside is unaccessible. Thus, the occupied space fulfills a desire of direct confrontation. It is not possible to visit the exhibition from outside, the viewer has to be immersed in this sort of environment.”
Yann Géraud’s sculpture can be observe or understand as an attempt to “objectify the thought” and to produce “visual or perceptual structures” such as those described by Denis Oppenheim in the 1980s. How is it possible to formally translate mind mechanism?
According to Yann Géraud, the plastic answer to those speculative questions lies in the accuracy to complex forms and to combinatorial analysis.It also continually focuses on the creation and production process, with a deep concern for the artist’s physical implication in production. He constantly reformulates the same commandment in his work, as well as in his writings, in order to show how pieces are produced and to expose their physical making: “While imitating industry in terms of reactivity, forms have to stand up to any type of perfection standard. They have to reveal the way they have been produced,” or “those hand-crafted pieces have been created in the simplest and fastest way including a complete physical implication,” or his exhortation of “preferring coal to diamonds.” In Yann Géraud’s work, Execution (2007) led up to Erehwon p.o.v. and revealed his interest in combinatory forms. This labyrinthine and composed sculpture evoking both a garrote and a machine underlines an interest in simple forms: “a complex sculpture integrates within itself all outer ideas, contrary to a fascist and transcendental simple form. A complex sculpture is a generous, a stricto sensu human one."
The artist expends the rhetoric of struggle and pursues a romantic ideal that, at first glance, is hidden beyond violence and esotericism. However, this desire is not anachronistic:it points out a necessity to contest the standardization of mankind, as well as production. This represents a desire to move away from industrial representations, from mass media vocabulary, and to enlarge and broaden the viewpoint, or inversely to strongly constrain it. Caro and Claro. Long live War. Géraud’s works are “a sans-culotte army led to the battlefield.”
[1]. « Pourquoi ne pas inverser le procédé et permettre à la pensée de s’insérer après que la forme ait été mise en place ? Le but serait alors d’objectiver l’esprit, de le rendre en terme de constructions qui soient presque visuelles. Ces constructions recevraient alors une énergie, une force qui serait elle-même similaire à celle de cette pensée. Une démarche ambitieuse serait de rechercher les structures visuelles / perceptuelles ; elles seraient des tentatives de refléter la pensée qui les produit, permettant donc à la forme extérieure de fonctionner sur le même plan d’énergie élevée que celui de la pensée qui traverse l’esprit. » Denis Oppenheim, 1980.