2009 – 2010
Shadow theatre consisting of 3 merry-go-rounds,
3 overhead projection screens
and 30 white PVC silhouettes,
180 × 310 cm (each screen)
Inv. 2010.1194
Notice
Hugues Reip’s world is one of images –
moving images and images in motion, still
images and frozen images. He draws on
multiple sources, from futuristic science
fiction (from Jules Verne to Z movies)
and films (from Georges Méliès to cartoons,
by way of the earliest experimental films
and old school animation films) to art
history (from Giorgione to graffiti collected
on school desks), collecting, compiling
and assembling. Reip’s installations,
sculptures and films all issue from the
practice of drawing. His apparently simple
works are made out of the sparest of means
– string and cut-up cardboard boxes –
displaying a meticulous lightness. They
conjure up a fantastic territory that is
reminiscent of a child’s world and is
imbued with rock ’n’ roll energy. Hugues
Reip, it could be said, deconstructs the
mechanics of the spectacle without tumbling
into the pitfalls of the spectacular.
The work titled White Spirit (Black Soul)
is a good example of this dynamic. Shadows
of cut-up silhouettes arrayed on three
revolving surfaces are projected on three
taut screens. These fantastic figures,
material versions of nocturnal spirits,
perform a non-stop parade, calling to
mind a fairy tale and a carnival.
Originally created for the inner courtyard
of the Jardin du Luxembourg for the 2009
‘Nuit Blanche’, and adapted for display
in the MAC/VAL, White Spirit (Black Soul)
proposes a re-reading of the Platonic
myth of the cave combined with a dance
of death in the great medieval tradition.
With this magic lantern, Reip offers us
a dreamlike meditation in black and white
on the illusory, cyclical and ephemeral
nature of things. In this shadow theatre,
nothing is concealed. The technical system
is on view and plays a part in the
spectacle itself, in the manner of
theatrical machinery during the Baroque
period. There is no mystery in the making
of this moving frieze. Illusionism is
replaced by the manufacture of illusion,
thus leaving everyone free to dreamily
contemplate the immaterial procession,
or to examine the mechanism, or even to
embrace the installation in its entirety.
F.L.