Merci

In collaboration with the municipality of Bordeaux, it was decided to bring back to life the Temple des Chartrons, an iconic place for the inhabitants of the French city. The exhibition “Merci” is a site-specific project developed during four month of residency.
The exhibition is an immersive proposal that questions our complex and contradictory relationship with nature, through a displacement of vegetal elements in contraposition with the symbolic architecture of a temple that has been closed to the public for more than thirty years.

Painting, sculpture, video, sounds and projections enliven the space. Through a series of juxtapositions of images using different media, perspective games and changes in spatial and temporal scales, a path both sensory and metaphysical prevents a single reading.

The installation is acquired by the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.

V I D E O T E A S E R

The word merci was originally used in the 10th century to ask for mercy, grace, pardon, therefore implying an unbalanced dialogue. One of the first words that you already know in French is merci. Also, by chance, you will wander in a church and find merci engraved on the walls, the evocative and concrete meaning of an ex-voto, an offering in exchange for grace.
In the temple, MERCI becomes a dialogue between the sacred and the pagan, vertical and horizontal thinking, the human being and the idea of nature. More than a tribute, it’s a reversible relationship of challenge made of fear and attraction.

Videos by Matteo Berardone
An special MERCI;
Silvia, Arturo, Gael, Gaetano, Fabrizio, Simone, Oriana, Edoardo, Carmelo, Juliette, Lucas, Claire, Anne helene, Jean Francois, the amazaing people from vivre dell’arte, Silvan, Tatiana and her ballet, Vinny, Max, Marta, Laurallan, Angela, Jaro, Javi, Benjamin and all the other people who made that possible and I maybe forgot in this list.Merci.