Alain Bernardini's Decade-Long Observation of Suburban Gardeners at Espace Jules Verne

Since 1991, Alain Bernardini has spent nearly every Thursday observing public parks in northeastern Paris, focusing on gardeners he designates by order of appearance. The exhibition at Espace Jules Verne in Brétigny-sur-Orge (16 December 2001 – 23 February 2002) presents multiple forms of this work. Upon entering, visitors encounter seven lawnmowers aligned against a wall with five gardener silhouettes drawn in chalk. For the opening, seven dump trucks ran their engines outside the center. The show includes inkjet prints, a locker, armchairs, and a coffee table, but video dominates: four diptychs (two monitors each) contrast silent left screens showing gardeners and objects with sound-enabled right screens depicting trucks and increasing stills. The work explores a dialectic of activity and inactivity, fullness and emptiness, event and suspension. Bernardini draws from hyper-banality to construct a formal universe irreducible to its model, serving as a paradigm of manifestation as a mode of being and apprehension of reality. The exhibition also features the publication "Ça va mieux" (Éditions Cent Pages, 2001).