Suite 2
Solo show by Caroline Duchatelet
October 15 - November 5, 2005
Galerie de la Friche, Friche la Belle de Mai, 13003 Marseille.
Supported by Conseil Artistique à la Création, région PACA and Texen society.
Near the Marseille train station lies the Friche la Belle de Mai, a former tobacco factory. Many spaces are vacant, destroyed, or walled off, while others are under construction. It is a site in progress—dark inner alleyways, vast dilapidated parking lots, metal fences, partially collapsed walls, raw cement and concrete. There’s constant movement in and out.
From a distance, from above, the city unfolds in pale facades and tiled rooftops.
Iron doors, a metal staircase, the second floor. The gallery is a rectangular, heavy space with white-painted cinderblock walls and an asphalt floor.
Light enters, filtered through a series of frosted-glass windows, and more directly through two windowless portholes. Through these openings: rooftops, facades, railway tracks, graffiti-covered walls, and the partially destroyed courtyard of the Friche.
The noise of passing trains is ever-present—the screech of their arrival or movement. Intermittent rehearsal sounds drift in.
The space is left empty.
The works cling to the edges of the space, along the raw borders of the rectangle.
To the left on entering, three vertical wooden panels protrude from the wall at three different angles, painted in shades of ochre orange on the wall side and white on the outer sides.
Further on, a grey PVC canvas is stretched. At times, a light grey luminous mass appears and drifts across it in slow, breathing motions, followed by orange-toned forms, their intensities shifting with the daylight.
Text by Caroline Duchatelet
Translation: Triangle-Astérides
Suite 2 is a continuation of the exhibition Suite 1, presented from May 27 to June 26 at Galerie Où, Marseille.
3 coated and painted wooden panels, 430 x 205 cm. PVC canvas, 420 x 400 cm. 28 fluorescent lights with programmed gradations in variations of neutral whites, greys, and oranges.
With inventors Fabrice Gallis and Guillaume Stagnaro, and lighting designer Serge Damon.
