A.B. Meadows
"Maremonde", An Installation by Alain Géronnez
Alain Géronnez, "Maremonde", installation, water, newspapers
4.60 m (diameter), Speelhoven '01
Embedded in a rural landscape, underneath a lush tree,
surrounded by the grass of a meadow, a nearly circular 'pool' has been
created by installing a layer made of slightly overlapping newspapers placed
side by side, in a shallow hollow, an almost unnoticeable depression discovered
in the flat ground. This 'newspaper pool' has been filled, up to a point,
with water, leaving a margin of light grey newspapers uncovered by
the water in the pool. The whitish newspaper-covered bottom of the basin,
in combination with the sparkling water above it, is producing strange
effects of sunlight mirrored in the pool. The element of water is very
noticeably 'alive' for it can also be stirred, and while we see it, it
is apparently stirred by the wind. It is translucent and this latter quality
is even more obvious because of the light grey, almost white newspapers
at the bottom. Its movements contrast with the ring of newspapers sticking
out from the basin which form a strange, light grey, stationary zone of
transition between the artificial pool and the green leaves of the meadow.
But the paper, processed in a paper mill and covered with newspaper print
in a print shop, stems also from nature, its substance being pulp, its
source being the wood of felled trees.
The onlooker perceives the artificial installation integrating
the live element of translucent water and the produced, extremely 'social'
or 'society-based' element of a layer made of many copies of daily newspapers
in a context which grants wide vistas that open up between the trunks and
foliage of trees. A focal point, a source of life is suggested by the water,
the almost circular (and insofar, almost abstract rather than organic)
form of the "spring" constructed. A spring that reflects sunlight and the
color of the sky. It is almost self-evident that this installation could
only be placed below a tree, underneath its leaves, at the edge of a meadow.
The hand of man, the vision of an artist, of Alain Geronnez, has added
to the seeming innocence of nature (A NATURE ALREADY INTEGRATED IN FACT
INTO A SOCIAL FABRIC, BY THE VERY USE WE MAKE OF IT) a new, purposeless,
non-instrumental and therefore, much more real and true, innocence. It
is obvious that this difference, between the real and the seeming or illusory
is the fundamental opposition, or contradiction, we encounter and are thus
made aware of, in Alain Geronnez's installation realized in the context
of the SPEELHOVEN exhibition in 2001.
Tentoonstelling / exposition
SPEELHOVEN '01
(starting Sept. 1, 2001)
[Participating artists:]
Michel Blazy / Delphine Coindet / Cel Crabeels
/ Alec de Busschère / Alain Géronnez / Mara Goldberg / Hans
op de Beeck / Hugues Reip
De Organisatoren Isabelle Lemaitre en Baudouin
Oosterlynck
samen met
Luc Coeckelberghs, Vincent Halflants, Odo
Halflants, Leen Lybeer en Jos Uytterhoeven
heten u welcom.
v.z.v. Speelhoven. Haferbeekstraat 90
B-3200 Aarschot, Tel.-Fax 016 / 56 80 03
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