Jean-Loup Champion's White Boxes at Galerie Thierry Mercier

From September 23 to October 8, 2011, Galerie Thierry Mercier in Paris presented an exhibition of works by Jean-Loup Champion. The artist is known for his box-like assemblages that evoke a wide range of historical and contemporary references—from reliquaries and ex-votos to Baroque vanities, Surrealist objects, and Duchampian ready-mades—yet remain distinctly original. In a preface excerpted for the exhibition, critic Philippe Forest describes these works as "white boxes," the inverse of a black box: rather than recording a past catastrophe, they project the possibility of disaster into the present in order to ward off its inevitability. Forest connects this concept to Antonin Artaud's notion of a "rigged theater" of black magic, against which art offers a counter-spell of white magic, restoring body and soul in an ephemeral illusion of eternal glory. The exhibition featured Champion's characteristic use of uniform white color, giving the pieces a spectral, dreamlike quality while aligning them with classical bas-relief and statuary traditions.