THE PAPER HOUSE / Curated by Eléonore Gros
Charlie Chine
September 13 - December 14, 2019
Les Glacières
121 Avenue Alsace Lorraine
33200 Bordeaux
France
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
The bossy hands of the clock point out 7pm. They ring the beginning of the writing of the journals “The Chronicles of Reality”, an experimental project elaborated since May which offers participants the freedom to tell their own reality every Sunday between 7 and 7.05pm through “a descriptive and subjective typed report of people and behaviours”. This literary substance will be the fuel of the PAPER HOUSE but also the essential raw material to its formal achievement. The artist offers here the second version of this immersive art installation.
It is at the time of this temporal suspension that the PAPER HOUSE takes shape whereas the red dressed secretary starts her work by recopying the Chronicles of Reality on her typewriting machine. Behind the desk, revealing its noisy and wobbling apparatus in the intertwining of its infernal chain of production, a sort of Bachelor Machineassigns a specific function to each of the instruments that are positioned one behind the others. Amongst the sounds that resonate cyclically, the Manacts like the Perfect tool, attentive and quiet. He appears here as the fetish instrument of the machine making the connection between the devices and conforming to the rhythm of the concerto that is played in front of him.
At the end of the chain of production, an old portable radio oscillates between transmission and reception whereas the end of its antenna guides us towardsTheReading Room. Going through the yellowed pages of the “Chronicles of Reality “, the reading of the journals is held in a space with cosy and reassuring furniture. In the distance, overlooking the reconstruction of a workshop, an old film seeming to come from the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA) testifies to gestures and work postures.
Prototype performed for a 35 hours workweek, the Brick-making Workshop demonstrates a unique craftsmanship. White coats and gloves on, the movements of the workers summon a calibrated set of tools and oblige to a calculated circulation of the bodies until the final product is stored. The Laboratory of Gestures shows bricks made in paper that are stacked by series and left to be tested. For one hour during the 35 hours workweek, the bricks were manipulated until the forms were exhausted, this short time allowed a whole repertoire of gestures to be revealed. At the end of the installation, The Showroomof the PAPER HOUSE delivers a world of poetry and sampling evolving between the exhibition of bricks prototypes, domestic structures and radiographic drawings with compulsive geometric shapes.
With the PAPER HOUSE and the edition of the journals of the “Chronicles of Reality”, Charlie Chine presents herself here as an archaeologist of her time who intends to give the floor to the (extra)ordinary of a Sunday time.
Eléonore Gros
Curator
