laetitia deschamps

Abundance - The Day after and the Rope-trick

We live in a world of abundance. Never before have humanity had so much. There is more than enough for everyone, if distributed right. We live in a part of the world that for many generations have produced and used for abundance and the goal has been reached a long time ago. But we do not know how to use this abundance. The piles of trash grow into mountains that threaten to bury us all in an avalanche. There is no place untouched and no resource we do not threaten to suck dry. The abundance of ideas, information, knowledge and progress of the analytical mind is escalating. Everything new is old at the next click evolving into the next level. Nothing lasts and everything grows beyond control. There has never been so much art in the world before. There are more new artists every year than what there has been artists altogether through all of history. Our time is a time of pictures, movies, music and artifacts in abundance; art as well as non-art. There is no end to what humans can accomplish and demolish, in abundance.

We consume in abundance. Will there be a day after ? We think we can escape the consequences. What will be the magic rope-trick that can save us all ?

The viewer will not be able to sit and be in a confortable position of meditation or contemplation in the gazebo. The work, made of its triangular volume, occupies the central space which was intended for a gathering place, a place of rest. The straps in tension wich suspend the volume obstruct the passage. The spectator must stay outside to look at the work through open windows. He may go around the work and confront the angles and a side view. In a tension between pictoriality and graphics, the specator will find no hidden solution to an anamorphosis and will approach a certain continuity between the three faces. The triangular shape of the work prevents completely seeing two sides simultnaeously and it is totally impossible to see all three sides at the same time. It may be necessary to show proof of memory to find compositional links between the three faces, to compare color intensities and to interpret shapes or any narration.

This sculpture-installation is inspired by the drawing that was part of the previous installation entitled “Ansikter”. It is located in a natural reserve near Stockholm. The two figures are positioned between two trees in an improbable position. One plays with weightlessness linked to another firmly anchored to the ground. One's foot and the other's hand have become a shell (obus) that connects them and holds them together. This work was purposely doomed to the ephemeral and destruction being made of papier-mache, yet it is nevertheless miraculously intact despite the seasons since August 2020.

Photography by Masoud Shahsavari

"Ansikter", installation, cold porcelain, rope and clothespin - Collective exhibition at Studio-44, Stockholm, Sweden

"Saknade delar" in Swedish means the missing parts. How to show what is missing, how to show what is partial or missing? This installation is made up of three interrelated works. Faces (Ansikter), shells (skal) and one drawing. A serie of faceprints dried on the clothesline, washed of their identities by the streching and shrinking of the print. From these deformations it has now become impossible to match the original with its imprint. A diversion of death masks intended for the preservation of the identities of the dead before the appearance of photography, has been carried out. The faces have become empty shells. In the drawing, the identity is going away, flying like a baloon in the air, maintained by an other person.

Le premier mouvement, Installation in the exhibition "Mouvement" in Caen, France

In this collective exhibition in an old church in Caen, each artist involved occupying a side aisle between two bays to bear witness to the movement. In the realization of this mobile and luminaire, I wanted to introduce a movement from the ground up to the sky and combine the movement of the air with the ambulatory passage of the viewer. He was invited to turn around the work in a circular fashion and to make this passage to look at the mural series. The slightest light touch by the air on the colored paper activated the movement of the paper. The title questions the origin of the movement, the first movement cannot be determined in its nature or origin. However, humans seem to locate it in the movement of the stars or even perhaps in the living world.

LAETITIA DESCHAMPS

Installations

ABUNDANCE

IN TENSION

KAJKO

SAKNADE DELAR

MOUVEMENT