MANGER AVEC LES YEUX

In recent years, I developed my work around the presentation modes (display). By studying the mechanisms of exposure and arrangement of museums and stores, I gradually extracted strategies of presentation that fed my work process. I enjoy observing how products, objects or artworks are shown, exploring and revealing the underlying methods that are used to value them, sometimes even by fetishizing them. I distort the aesthetics borrowed from design to question the status and the hierarchy of the shown object, sometimes creating in this way a confusion of roles between the presented object and the display as an object.

« Magritte goes to a grocer’s shop near his house to buy Dutch cheese. The merchant leans towards her stall to pick up a started piece but has her movement almost directly stopped by the painter :

– No, madam. Not this one. I’d rather buy this other one.

And he points at a second piece, started as well, placed a bit on the side, on a shelf.

– But it’s the same cheese ! The merchant shouts.

– No, madam, Magritte objects again. The one on the stall has been observed by the passersby all day long. »

(Mariën Marcel, Suivre à Magritte, dans L’Art Belge, January 1968.)

Manger avec les yeux is an installation that hinges on this anecdote told by Marcel Mariën. Here in the window, the cheese is replaced by a turning cake tray, without cake. I invite the passersby to contemplate this object of presentation stripped of its function and to « consume » it with their eyes.

Hand-painted text by Miles Signs.