For this new highlight of its program, Double Séjour invites Cecilia Granara and Pierre Unal-Brunet for a duo show, À fleur de boue, curated by Thomas Havet from March 24 to April 24, 2021.

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In troubled waters

Let us consider what, from the mud, stains the gaze with a pack of sticky or even egregious, garish light, from the bottom of a strange and dubious cavity that nobody would dare to gawk at. But who is seen and who is watching? Certainly a bloodstained question, mainly concerning the light that is hiding, that is rolling on the eyes as a transient apparition. On their side, him, her, the others, are looking into the mud to have a better look. And in troubled waters they ultimately perceive color, a reflection, a grain, a glimmer that upsets the grimy part inhabited by monsters.

But this charming story of a well-hidden light also conceals its opposite, its twin, a form of deceitful foolishness, dangerous and efficient. Him, her, always the same ones, can be fooled. Because their pupils face the risk of tipping over when they approach the meretricious color chart and the seductive poses. Everything is liquid, so that comfort is disturbed, the flamboyant surface of the painting reveals its pallid double. At that very moment, in front of this painted screen, they turn around, notice a sleepy face, punctured, flanked by the fingers of a ghost; a macabre parade if there ever was one, color drips, escapes, giving way to agony.

Chiasmi

Like the first lines of a tale, À fleur de boue catches the visitor in a sneaky game, a fantasy engaging him in a waltz where the classical erotic dialectics, between the smell of blood, the miasma and the b
eauty of the day, seems to escape him. We enter this space like the belly of a magical animal. On the floor, the colorful venules drawn by Pierre Unal-Brunet recall the underside of our organs, what we don’t see and governs us, well-hidden.

But like Jonas who stays only for three days in the monstruous belly of an aquatic creature, one has to escape from the viscosity of the juice and happy, relieved, find a place next to Cecilia Granara’s anthropomorphic jellyfish, who engage in expiatory and emancipatory purges.

A questionable order, since the opposite path is plausible. They had noticed it, them, always the same ones: this is a crossover, a deceptive back-and-forth between a darkening and an illumination. Darkness may not always hide in the asperity of the mouths of repulsive beasts who, once they are nailed to the wall, recall both elaborate tapestries and large insects. In this place of horror and awe, the sensual gulf of the face meets the colors who drape themselves in another meaning, that of the piaculary, potentially demiurgic, at least incantatory power to release something out of oneself.

Him, her

Who are they, those who dare to look from inside, discover the place where bliss and catastrophe coincide, where a filthy smell, which nobody knows, rises to your throat? They are probably the ones who examine
the world with their eye, a viscous and deceitful orifice, an oily but deep surface, the origin of what we observe before being seen or before watching. Creatures will answer then, with their finery and their threats.

Text of the exhibition by Rémi Guezodje 

More information: doublesejour.com