HANNA ROCHEREAU
01.12.2022 - 18.12.2022
curated by Héloise Chassepot
Lokal Int, Bienne/Biel
Rue Hans-Hugi 3, 2502 Bienne, Suisse
Photographer : Stefania Carlotti
INVENTORY
Hanna draws up an
inventory of various exhibition devices.
DESIRE
She conscientiously
picked and selected the items she desires. Sometimes it is fashion, sometimes its displays.
NAIVITY
In
a naive and juvenile attitude she acts as if, through the act of representation,
she could possess the items she paints.
HANNA’S BACKGROUND
Hanna
has a background in visual merchandising, which is an activity that deals with
the visual organization of sales areas or/and cultural areas in order to
optimize the presentation of products, the well-being and satisfaction of
customers, visitors
and staff. An activity that aims at promoting
dirty so-to-say. What you see is what you get, they used
to say.
SHOWCASES
They are
containers in which our desires and wishes are stored. In one of the painting, the showcase has been emptied. A shift that allows the object to be freed from its usual function,
eventually gaining the prestigious status of the one of the object of desire, fetishized.
EMPTINESS OR BLACK FRIDAY
Empty displays, as
if they had been robbed during the last black Friday, as
if there was nothing left to sell, nothing left to exhibit; we can eventually focus
one’s attention on the exhibition’s device
itself.
PINK RIBBON
A kinky pink
ribbon branded by the letter H wraps the shiny/glazed cube.
WRAPPED PACKAGGING
The wrapped
packaging.
FASHION RULES
As we all know really well,
fashion is ruled by a cyclic move, a seasonal renewal. Fashion is in perpetual
motion, having to constantly reinvent and renew itself, by constantly finding
new ways of arranging shapes, colors and materials, by drawing on past fashions
to bring them up to date.
STARS
The famous Adidas’ jacket, international and intergenerational (let’s say:
universal) star of the streetwear is here highly displayed on a white moulding
and carefully covered by a transparent plastic sheet. A displacement that
reminds us how fashion is the best example of cultural recycling, how class
belonging is masked behind a mix and match of clothing, how the big companies
might be happy about it. How funny, the painting is title Cover
the star ?
GOOD DEAL
The good deal. It’s a good deal. A recognizable sign, as seen
as the Mickey mouse white gloved hand is articulating a thumb-up gesture as to
say « It’s a good deal », a
sign of appreciation reminding how validation or dislike are omnipresent in
everyday life.
THE GLOVES ARE OFF
A unique transparent hand levitating on in a 90’s grey background. The
style of an advertising for a glove-holder in plexiglass that ironically thwart
the expression « the gloves are off », meaning when people compete or
argue unscrupulously.
KEEP UP APPEARANCES
In an overall, times seem to collapse. While the injunction « keep
up appearances » evokes the merciless rhythm of consumption and its social pressure, the
patching of various eras of interiors, styles and references layered by the
very personal spectrum of the artist’s envies and desires give the feeling of
an anachronistic compilation. The feeling of time are shuffled once again by
the slow-process of painting that certainly operate as a catharsis. The artistic process being way longer than the one of the commercial purchase provide a
kind of reverse chronology. Hanna reinvent the
idea of possession that can no longer be dealt with impersonal currencies but
need to be owned first: desiring the desire. Keep up with appearances is no
longer a threat, and the rules of the visual merchandising are no longer « what you see is what
you get ». It tells us instead that we do desire, we can then
see.
Margaux
Dewarrat & Héloïse Chassepot