Sylvain Rousseau's 'Le Bureau (de la certitude)' at Collège des Bernardins

Sylvain Rousseau's exhibition 'Le Bureau (de la certitude)' runs from November 9, 2012 to January 20, 2013 at Collège des Bernardins in Paris. Curated by Alain Berland as part of a program on blindness, the show dialogues with Bruno Perramant's concurrent exhibition. The centerpiece is a table with a lamp, but the light circle on its surface is an illusion—not from the bulb but from a window, creating a ghostly aura that shifts with viewpoint. The desk, referencing Ludwig Wittgenstein's text, appears abandoned. In an earlier version at Galerie LHK, the table resembled a design object or Ikea ready-made; here it is more artisanal, with Rousseau making all works himself. A large painting on wood mounted on a white wooden slat wall depicts two cocktail glasses with straws and ice cubes, an ironic response to the art world's superficiality. The painting is flattened, similar to Rousseau's earlier work where he 'flattened' Quechua tents used by homeless people, cutting their shapes into plywood like precious marquetry or illusion. The exhibition is reviewed in art press issue 396 (January 2013).