Jérémie Gindre
Crawl & Sédiments
22.1. —
6.3.2005
Cardboard advertising, billboards, stage sets, dust jackets on books, album covers, stuffed animals in museums of natural history — all of these are objects taken from our everyday world that harbor a significant narrative potential. The exhibition title Crawl & Sédiments triggers numerous associations, including the crawl style in swimming and the scientific investigation of sediments, as practiced in marine archeology. The title thus evokes crawling swimmers as well as treasure hunters who are digging up maritime objects and other gems hidden in sediments. For Jérémie Gindre (born in 1978, lives in Geneva), this debris comprises constituents of larger narrative contexts that are used as motifs for his narrative spaces, installations, objects, or photographs.
In his solo show Gindre starts from the hypothetical assumption of a space that is now finally dry after having been flooded. His stage-like work consists of newly produced objects and those created on site, as well as of existing works adapted for this show. Artificial puddles, real fishing nets, waste allegedly dumped into the sea, shells, sand, and algae all form a landscape in which romantically imbued elements, such as a message in a bottle, are combined with theatrical and illusionary objects, such as the shape of a boat to which a seascape with boats is applied. The rear view of the boat — resembling an object used in a stage décor — exposes the illusion: unpainted wooden parts, struts, deposited beer bottles, and a crate of beer bottles reveal the prop-like character of the boat — it is simply part of a tale to be told. Gindre’s art operates on two levels: Its evocative power unleashes personal memories and individual associations, while distance-creating elements such as the rear view of the boat (something that could be found in a stage set) penetrate the work and present what is simulated as a simulation.
Text from Sabine Schaschl