The defender of time
While reviving the Defender of time (at Lafayette Anticipations), Cyprien Gaillard shows us the ruins and disorder of our time (at the Palais de Tokyo). An initiatory exhibition in two parts that speaks volumes about our fractures and cracks, and about our dreams of reconstruction and regeneration.
Once upon a time, there was a child who, every day, stopped running under a clock to observe Le Defender of time A monumental automaton perched atop a brass rock, battling with sword and shield against the onslaught of a time-devouring crab, dragon, and rooster… Created by Jacques Monestier, this mobile wall sculpture, installed in 1979 in the Horloge district of Paris, near the Centre Pompidou, was slated to cease operation in 2003 due to lack of maintenance… Gone were the three strokes of the bronze drum announcing the intermittent combat each hour (the man being attacked by one of the three allegorical animals, chosen by a “random programmer”…). Gone was the carousel of time suspended on the golden knight’s sword. Gone were those moments of reverie and fascination stolen from time itself…
It is to this shattered dream that Cyprien Gaillard It is brought back to life today, after having seen its knight paralyzed, abandoned to the four winds, and its golden brass skin tarnish and erode while it was soiled by a colony of pigeons…: "I've always wanted to breathe new life into someone else's work.", explains the artist, who succeeded in having the artwork, abandoned to its sad fate, removed for restoration. It currently sits at the heart of the high-tech tower of the Lafayette Anticipations Foundation.1 (patron of the project), before returning to its original location after the exhibition, it appears in its former splendor (a blend of hammered brass gilded with leaf and oxidized brass – the sculpture is a masterpiece of goldsmithing), but also bears the marks of time: it is thus soiled with pigeon droppings and dust that The Defender of Time valiantly resumed the fight against his attackers.
We admire the humility of the artist who steps aside for his predecessor. ; similarly, given the audacity of the Lafayette Anticipations Foundation, which followed Cyprien Gaillard in this unprecedented artistic "gesture," reducing the artistic intervention to the repair of an abandoned work and a few imperceptible modifications made within it. Among these, the background sound transformation accompanying each of the battles: at breaking waves visit us at the earthly rumble and breath of wind The hits of 2003, the year the automaton was shut down, were replaced – pop hits alternating with ambient music by Laraaji.
At the Palais de Tokyo, a different story is told, that of our relationship to time, to traces of decay and disintegration, and to the orchestration of their erasure. "of our connection to collapse and reconstruction"…Through our ruins, our abandoned territories and our wounded lands, but also the disorder of our gutted cities, covered in scaffolding…
In Frieze, a video projected on a screen, the artist confronts us with the disappearance of our monuments and imprisonment of our vision in the geometric tangle of metal frames covering our facades under construction. Another disappearance: these "love locks" (Love Locks) torn from the bridges to which they had been attached, and recovered in large construction bags in the warehouses of the Paris road maintenance department: dangerous waste (because it threatened the bridges with collapsing under its weight) transformed by the artist into ready-mades as if to better resist disappearance…
Like Humpty Dumpty, this egg-shaped character from an 18th-century English nursery rhymee century popularized by his absurd dialogue with Alice in on the other side of the mirror 2And who, having fallen from a wall while boasting of his superpowers, will be unable, despite multiple attempts, to regain his original state, we seek, according to Cyprien Gaillard, to erase our flaws and our disorder, to fight against our collapse. A struggle that he has inscribed in the mechanism of the clock guarded by The Defender of Time en reversing the movement of the hands who have resumed their eternal countdown, but in reverse of the present, as if to reverse course… An impossible quest as illustrated by the shadows drawn with steel powder on the walls by Daniel Turner (guest artist): ready to disintegrate before our eyes, resulting from combustion (of dissolved parts of the Eiffel Tower renovation site) and destined to disappear, they are a beautiful mise en abyme of dissolution, a beautiful allegory of decay, a disturbing capture of the work of time…
- Space rehabilitated by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (OMA/AMO agency).
- Continuation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland published in 1871 by Lewis Carroll.
The "HUMPTY \ DUMPTY" exhibition is presented in two parts:
“HUMPTY” – Palais de Tokyo
“DUMPTY” – Lafayette Anticipations
Until January 8
