Charming (Les Bourgeois)
Installation in three parts. Mixed media, graphite on wall, framed folded photograph. 2014
B.M.: 1.57 metres: a recurring height in some of your pieces??
C.G.: This is the standard hanging height in museums so that there is a harmony throughout the rooms. It’s a height I am interested in because of its “validation” aspect. At this height, every work becomes “museal”, it becomes part of the club...
B.M.: Let’s get back to your project for Montrouge.
C.G: My idea is to once again take ropes, transport crates and the height of 157 cm and to “replay” Rodin’s The Bourgeois of Calais. It’s a work that is over a hundred years old, completely “museal” and moreover, from its ground level aspect, has a participatory resonance that is quite surprising. But in this case, the height of 157 cm is also that which decapitates these bourgeois, they are sentenced to death after all... This gives an entirely different aspect to the of the museum “club”, which could just as easily be a cemetery. At the same time, the ropes also resemble something that grows, like an extremely resolute patch of grass.
Extract from interview with Bernard Marcadé, catalogue 59eme Salon de Montrouge.
