Pascal Bauer's Playful Sisyphean Installations at Saint-Denis Museum

At the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis, Pascal Bauer's works engage with the venue's architecture. In the chapel, inflatable plastic self-portraits of the artist as terrible children brandish fists and grimace, signaling menace. A giant bust of Bauer is projected three times onto the stone vault, bowing and hitting its head against an unseen wall. The video installation 'La Foule' loops a naked man walking, with the screen moving on a metal beam, updating the myth of Sisyphus. The contrast between the bare figure and the powerful technology adds irony and humor. In 'À nos grands hommes' (2009), Che Guevara appears in slippers, wielding a vacuum cleaner hybridized into a rifle. In the garden, 'Le Cercle' (2012) presents a virtual bull pacing in a circle, its presence intensified by technology. The bull is another Sisyphus trapped in a loop, yet with hope, echoing Albert Camus's call to imagine Sisyphus happy. The exhibition ran from December 7, 2012 to January 28, 2013.