Group Exhibition at Transpalette Explores Endings and Absence

At Centre d'art contemporain Transpalette in Bourges, curators Damien Sausset and Jérôme Cotinet-Alphaize invited three young artists to transform the industrial wasteland for the summer exhibition, running from July 1 to August 20, 2011. Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann fills the deserted courtyard with fairground music, a tightrope for an invisible tightrope walker, and glitter on the ground; a pinball machine has lost its decoration, while a video surveys the depopulated surroundings. Archival posters of underground concerts from the 1980s haunt the workshop and art center walls. In a room adjacent to the theater, Julie Bena presents the video 'L'Art de dresser la table,' an improvised choreography with Adrien Vescovi that stops just as the ceremony might begin. The performance's sound accompanies a static landscape of minimal gray ramps on the floor and folded umbrellas against the walls, their drapes too soft to be real. This interplay of movement and stillness recurs in the video 'Eclaircie.' Claire Trotignon offers a three-dimensional drawing: in a room with the floor removed, a mountain silhouette is visible, approachable only by a pontoon that is closed off. The works resonate with themes of contemplation, waiting, and absence, softening T.S. Eliot's line: 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.'