07 Oct 2009

Thierry Fournier at lux Scene nationale de Valence

Un geste qui ne finit pas (A Never Ending Gesture) is Thierry Fournier's first solo show at Lux Scène nationale de Valence (France), being held from 10 October to 16 November 2009, in tandem with Point d'orgue (Fermata), another solo show by the artist being presented from 24 to 31 October 2009 by the Espace Kawenga in Montpellier (France).

By exploring figures of trace, appearance and disappearance, Thierry Fournier's works challenge presence and otherness, by way of spaces and the time-frames they introduce. Whether they take the form of visual or sound projects, interactive installations or performances, they usually develop within the perceptible - even physical - experience which they propose to their spectators.

'Experiencing present time, but, even more so, trying to formulate what it is, is like wanting to catch a fish in the water of a river with your bare hands. Here, in an empirical way, we have the experience [...] of a space-time that is unruly, rebellious, instant and non-existent, in an extremely troubling relation between the present and the presence of bodies [1]'. The five works on view in the exhibition illustrate this approach: a tank of water briefly holds the writings and drawings of spectators, the trajectories of a point of light arouse the voice of a woman who calls us back, a screen transmits the image of what lurks behind it with a 24-hour lapse, a slide projector endlessly seeks the point of a confused image, polystyrene packaging becomes an icescape, run through by acoustic quakes...

In transposing images and objects of reality, and creating their own materials based on digital devices, these works, which juggle with the ambiguities of perception, are forever questioning our relation to the world: our gestures open up a question which remains unanswered.

Thierry Fournier lives and works in Paris (France). As a visual artist, graduate of the Lyons National College of Architecture, and a musician and composer, he became involved in the visual arts in the late 1990s. In less than ten years, he has produced more than 40 works: installations, interactive pieces, videos, photographs, performances, sound and musical pieces, drawings, and publications. His works, which have been internationally distributed, have been exhibited in particular at the Centre Pompidou, Festival d'Automne, Ménagerie de Verre, FRAC Haute Normandie, Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon (France), NibelungenMuseum Worms (Germany), Techniches Museum Vienna (Austria), world fairs at Aïchi (Japan) and Zaragoza (Spain), and at several festivals : Next, Novellum, Synthèse, Rencontres de Carthage, ISEA… He is currently preparing a group show and publication of his research works at the Nancy National College of Arts, as well as a film and stage work, Seul Richard, adapted from Shakespeare's Richard II.

In relationship with this exhibition, Lux proposes a manifestation dedicated to the avant-gardes, and particularily on researches about cinétics and abstraction in the cinema of the 20s.