Jean-Christophe Nourisson

Jean‑Christophe Nourisson was born in 1962 and lives and works in France

The Architectural Abstractions of Jean‑Christophe Nourisson

Over the past decade Jean‑Christophe Nourisson has created abstract sculptures often designed as ensembles that although not strictly in situ engage in dialogue with exhibition spaces. One of the most complex examples in this regard was the construction titled Sur les bords, 2ème version… exhibited in 1996 in two facing rooms of Fort Beauregard in Besançon. In that Vauban architecture each vaulted stone room was occupied by a large smooth sloping platform measuring 4 × 4 m painted vivid red taking possession of the space and allowing the viewer to apprehend it from the edges. This platform supported on an arrangement of wooden elements elevated and sloping accommodated volumetric structures made of wood sanded outside and painted white inside balanced on compensatory assemblies of rafters. In one room a single parallelepiped structure with a wide opening occupied a fairly central position on the platform. The other platform held two rather cubic structures with narrow openings connected by a walkway supported by rafters following the slope. That walkway complemented by small staircases leading on either side to the volumes door‑like openings and because some wooden pieces could be called rafters due to their standard thickness all imparted an architectural connotation bordering on figuration. In this work the viewer can easily transpose the volumetric structures into living units into rooms. Yet it is through abstraction that the work acts on the viewer but an abstraction naming architecture (one might say architecturability) as its exploratory domain.

Two simultaneous interpretations arise from an initial observation. One emerges by a purely physical approach. Although the viewer is aware of walking on the solidity of a horizontal floor (solidity inferred from the thickness of the Vauban walls) the viewer is somewhat destabilised by the lifting of the platforms and the detachment of the bases of the volumetric structures. The vast tilted red surface and the significant size of the geometric volumes emphasise the slenderness of what holds them in tilted balance. The bases which should be zones of anchorage and firmness being fragile induce doubt almost vertigo in the viewer soon led into the imagination: “What if the room in which I am standing—which I perceive as a spatial unit but whose support I cannot see—were itself in danger of tipping? If this situation I appear to dominate—since only someone smaller than me could inhabit these rooms—were only a link in a nested situation? Who is watching me from the outside while I gaze into these cubes? What do we know of horizontality? Do Australians not feel their feet on the ground? …”

The other interpretation is more conceptual though dependent on the composition of volumes and colours. It highlights the implicit reference to Malevich or more exactly to something Malevichian among the dynamic diagonals the lightening of what could be mass by levitation (these are undeniably floating floors) the red the white the proportional relationships between the geometric structures and the lines that connect or extend them. More precisely perhaps what floats is a memory of Constructivism of avant‑garde geometric abstraction with dual resonance. On one hand the work appeals to the utopia of ideal architectures within the solid shell of these Vauban walls the cubes and parallelepipeds as if lifted by rafters above them are like impalpable models of a Borgesian dreamer. At the same time the presence of fabrication reinforced by the material (industrial plywood rafters white coatings) refers to the very concrete pragmatism of industrial functionalism. Yet this visibility is exhibited through a subversion of architectural functions. It is as much deconstruction as construction.

This second interpretation raises questions. Why would a contemporary artist establish such a bridge between his work and early twentieth‑century Constructivism? Is it a citation? A remake? Other works by Jean‑Christophe Nourisson confirm and clarify this reference. In 1995 the artist began a series of small 15 × 15 cm cubic boxes made of raw thick cardboard mounted on the wall and open at the front exposing a square photogram behind glass (5 × 5 cm). Arranged in random compositions the boxes enter into the viewer’s space without imposing themselves. The viewer must shift position isolate each identical cube to guess which landmark twentieth‑century sculpture left a faint white shadow on the black paper: Picasso’s Guitar Tatlin’s Counter‑relief Moholy‑Nagy’s Light‑Space Modulator… This photogram principle was soon reused by the artist with more assertive intent. For Manifestes in 1997 for example the boxes were slightly enlarged and appear from a distance as black squares on a light grey background. On those squares the viewer can—with effort due to small type and photogram blur—read the great manifestos of the avant‑gardes. The Résidus of 1997 and 1998 grew in size (100 × 130 cm) and in flatness lacking volumes to house them they appear to rival painting or perhaps photography. Indeed their referential iconography is architecture one series shows traces of Malevich’s Architectones another of similar dimensions shows the spatial staging of geometric abstraction in experimental exhibitions that made an event. Thus the photogram refers to a sector of modernist art history as a technique (Man Ray Christian Schad the Bauhaus) and as iconography (sculpture from about 1912 to 1940 architecture exhibitions manifestos). Moreover it sheds light on the construction of that history through reproduction since obviously these are cut‑out photographs that produced this genuine trace of light on photographic paper. Furthermore whether constructions or photograms Jean‑Christophe Nourisson’s works are almost all apprehended in a manner recalling Minimalism that is physically phenomenological because of proportions spatial arrangement the balance created between volumes and viewers’ movement. The bridge linking early twentieth‑century to the artist’s present forms an arch toward Judd. A better metaphor might be to say the work describes a nested situation within geometric abstraction—which includes Minimalism—there exists as a core of meaning something of Constructivism/Suprematism or more precisely of a modernity that substituted volume for mass in sculpture introduced plane in painting and articulated space in architecture.

Ultimately the work refers to that history of abstraction that pushed modernity to its extreme that same modernity which sparked with its avant‑garde excess the accusation of subscribing to an essentially utopian teleology. In The Distribution of the Sensible Jacques Rancière repositioned the stakes within a political perspective determined by how arts appear. The philosopher’s argument addresses the dominant artistic narrative vis‑à‑vis that modernity which centred painting’s autonomy claiming it sought its definition through its specificity namely flatness. Rejecting the validity of that supposed definitional quest he reminds us that whatever content is attributed to the plane its mode of appearance in itself is politically meaningful and tied historically to a global shift regarding the distribution of the sensible. He writes This painting poorly called abstract and supposedly reduced to its own medium is part of an overall vision of a new man housed in new edifices surrounded by different objects Its flatness is tied to that of the page of the poster or tapestry It is that of an interface And its anti‑representational purity is embedded in a context of interweaving pure art and applied art giving it immediately a political meaning[1]. By showing particularly the structural continuity between the page and the surface of painted signs in a global view of categories of distribution of the sensible since Plato Rancière demonstrates how the flatness of page and painting establishes a system of forms egalitarian which the mimetic perspectival system assigning hierarchical places to viewer as well as subject cannot. The surface of painted signs and moreover the white page the monochrome plane not knowing to whom one must or must not speak destroy any legitimate basis for circulation of speech the relationship between speech effects and positions of bodies in common spaces[2]. We can also find in Mallarmé who pioneered abstraction in writing testimony to the effect of that interface as consciousness of communal sharing emerging from form itself. In an article on Manet (the author of the first modernist works because of the frankness with which they acknowledge surfaces[3]…) Mallarmé wrote The participation of social strata previously ignored in the political life of France is a social fact that will honour the end of the nineteenth century A parallel occurs in the arts the ways had been prepared by an evolution to which the public attached with rare prescience from its first manifestation the label of intransigent which in political vocabulary means radical and democratic[4]. In that intransigent radical and democratic approach Suprematism and Constructivism articulated the plane toward spatial openness the ultimate place of distribution of the sensible to which neutrality and egalitarian clarity had to be maintained. Because that is how Picasso’s 1912 Guitar inaugurated new sculpture by linking it to architectural planar space Cutting a sheet of paper cardboard or metal Picasso transformed the page/toile interface by folding it thus transmuting at once the mass that defined sculpture into volume open to the viewer’s reading. Tatlin promptly adopted that volumetry making it part of real shared space defined by architectural planes in his famous Counter‑relief Those same surfaces determining transparency and spatial sharing the idea of furniture by planes the coupling of white page and architecture (in conceptual art) were reactivated by Minimalists rediscovering with delight a Constructivism long occluded by politics (East and West alike) the original timbre of modernist architecture that surrounded them.

Now returning to Jean‑Christophe Nourisson’s work we can understand what leads a contemporary artist to refigure iconographically semantically and abstractly the history of abstraction No one ignores the impact of modernist discourse’s questioning in the past two decades It was only in art the translation of the end of grand teleological narratives asserting a happy end to history (Christianity Hegelianism Marxism the progress of avant‑gardes until art disappears into life). That end of those narratives as Lyotard aptly noted led to two visions of postmodernism For Lyotard for those who deconstructed those narratives it was about continuing without illusion a knowledge of man about himself and his relationships with others and the world The other view exploited the doubt about values upheld by those grand narratives until proclaiming the cancellation of all value in generalized eclecticism a position which quickly revealed itself to be a strategy aimed at producing spectacular fashions creating ephemeral simulations of meaning for commercial benefit and those who wield it The recuperative power of that postmodernism makes the artist’s position difficult.

Jean‑Christophe Nourisson’s work does not mark a simple assertion but the tensions of ethical construction It is on the edges The photograms the Résidus in particular are perhaps the most explicit of those tensions Less effective than large constructions at leading the viewer to the imaginary they can be interpreted as pure nostalgia for modernism The quality of photographic paper behind its glass pane the question of trace induced by the photogram whose fragile effect appears at the edges of black and white the disappearance of volume into whiteness everything recalls a that‑was But if those white fields bordered in black and the trembling manifesto script signal mourning for utopias as the destabilization of platforms critiques functionalism one must refrain from seeing only postmodern melancholy Shaken at their foundations by utopian visions whose reversals were too often visible especially in countries where Constructivism was most radical geometric abstraction the modernity it embodies has lost its faith It is that faith which is mourned that force of conviction that sustained manifesto authors in their confidence to confront the world That foundation is destabilised In architecture functionalist reproducibility an agent of industrial universality did not fail to transform egalitarianism into repetitive demagogy But no longer being sure that values of equality will bring about the happy end of history does not imply turning away from democratizing forms As Lyotard emphasised grand narratives were not mere myths they carried emancipatory power For Jean‑Christophe Nourisson it is therefore a matter of demonstrating through an abstraction that preserves the presence of the plane and the space where the sensible is shared without hierarchical assignment the ethical strength that so strongly affirmed itself at first If edges become fragile while the artist reconfigures the plane it is because they enrich and interlace spaces For example the photograms of the Architectones while appearing to reinstate a blank slate introduce within Malevichian structures an infinite variety of virtual sequences inscribed in the now complex cutouts of borders Thus image reproduction—seemingly aligned with postmodern reproducibility—reveals itself as a factor of opening The ghost of modernity meets the call to imagination that is so present in the ensemble built at Fort Beauregard Modernity aimed to rupture with the past and directed its imagination toward the resolution of the end of history While affirming as an ethical stance the plane interface of the written page photography architecture Jean‑Christophe Nourisson nourishes that radicality with what geometric abstraction seemed to exclude memory and imagination.

— Text by Sylvie Coëllier

[1] Jacques Rancière Le partage du sensible, esthétique et politique, Paris La Fabrique‑éditions, p. 20.
[2] Ibid., p. 15.
[3] Clement Greenberg La peinture moderniste, in Peinture, cahiers théoriques 8/9, 1974, p. 34.
[4] Stéphane Mallarmé The Impressionists and Edouard Manet, 1876, in Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, edited by Carl‑Paul Barbier, Paris Librairie Nizet, Vol. 1, 1968.
[5] Jean‑François Lyotard La condition postmoderne, rapport sur le savoir, Paris Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979.