Jean-Pascal Flavien

Viewer

photos: GALERIE CATHERINE BASTIDE

The Viewer is a project on which Flavien has been working on
for the last two years. There are different steps. The project was first developed in a series of drawings in which the Viewer was set in tropical or antediluvian landscapes and desert climates, and at times placed beside dinosaurs. Flavien forges a peculiar and nonspeculative Science Fiction in those drawings. He is less interested by projections of the future or technology than by anachronisms, chronological deviations that all allow him to activate a different temporality in his work. The incongruity of placing architectural works next to dinosaurs was precisely such an anachronism.



The Viewer can exist in 3 different sizes. The one in Maricà is the medium size one. The one proposed for ARTBASEL Statement 08 is a sculpture version with sound experiments. The height is roughly 180 cm, or the size of atall person.

Description of the “Small Viewer”:

The small “viewer” is an installation setting. It was originally designed to be a display for transparent Plexiglassculptures. In this display, they would be viewed in the heads of the “viewer”. In each head, behind each Plexiglas object, would be a hole giving onto the inside of the “viewer”. As one sees the object, one also sees through the object, looks at the dark behind it.

The darker, second space, behind each object, is located in the bigger part of the “viewer”. It is its belly. In this version, it would work as a source of various phenomena, be it light movements, heat winds, sounds emission. The construction of this small “viewer” gives the possibility of elaborating this “winds”, “sounds”, “roars”… When one sees the objects, one is confronted to these sources, to these phenomena, which are acting as background, or some sort of subconscious.

In the context of Statement, the small “viewer” will be just a source of emission; there will not be any object in the heads. To create the winds, there will be several fans, some pulling the air from one head opening, some pushing the air out of another opening.

The will be a sound system, including sound source, amplifier, speakers. The sound will be designed specifically for this structure. The “viewer” has already a natural amplification nature, due to its form.

A system of light is set up inside. They will go off and on, alternating obscurity, intense light, and flashes, very much like a storm at some point. There will be programs running these components in order to create various patterns.

There will also be a heater, something that can regulate the temperature inside, in a way a blowing hotter, or colder winds towards the outside of the “viewer”

The “viewer” stands alone in the room. The “viewer” as a structure was also displayed in a series of drawings including dinosaurs, in some various settings from pre-historical periods to desert landscapes, creating a sort of science-fiction context to its viewing.

It was also build to a bigger size (a size latter described as the medium size), 4 x 7 x 5 m, in wood, on a cliff near the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. There, it is use as an office for “Devonian Press” publishing house.




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