On the Line

William Anastasi, Zbynék Baladran, Diego Bianchl, Katinka Bock, Miriam Cahn, Harald Klingelhöller, Vladimir Kokolia, Isa Melsheimer, Elodie Seguin, Francisco Tropa, Franz Erhard Walther, Christoph Weber

Curated by Sandrine Dierouet and Hélène Meisel

On the Line brings together fifteen sculptures exploring the diverse forms of suspension. Since the experiments of the Dadaists, Constructivists and Surrealists of the first half of the 20th Century, artists have proliferated modalities of suspension; from the ceiling, from walls, aerial, mobile or static. Above all, suspension is sculpture that does not touch the ground. Forms of suspension, whether invented or natural, vernacular or votive, have always preceded the artists in their research: scales, pendulums and plumb bobs are the first references, along with the pulley and the winch but also the anchor, pendants on chains, the rope that secures the mountaineer or that holds up the hanged... The artist’s desire to free themselves from the weight of gravity coexists with the need for an anchor, however light it may be, to maintain balance. The exhibition On the Line explores the many facets of suspension, looking beyond issues of gravity and balance, to embrace performance, language and sound.

A bronze acrobat, an ancient relic, hangs in the void suspended by a wire - his legs and arms dangling. This Etruscan acrobat, of which there is no known equivalent, could be imaged as having functioned as the weight of a balance: a mobile slider gliding along a calibrated beam, allowing the weighing of various commodities by revealing the point of balance. For One meter balance, Katinka Bock uses a large metal bar suspended horizontally to the floor, one end carries a ruler covered in fabric, and the other lemons. The work hovers in space thanks to subtle adjustments between the point from which it is hung, the weight of the fruit and that of the hidden ruler. The balance is disturbed as the lemons dry out. They must eventually be replaced. A kind of minimalist vanity, One meter balance, introduces a temporal dimension to the weighing operation.

Inspired by our conquest of the skies at the beginning of the 20th century, and then by space exploration in the 1960s, artists are occupied with aerial and astronomical visions. Whilst in residence at the Atelier Calder, Francisco Tropa designed his large cosmic mobile entitled Le songe de Scipion (Scipio’s Dream). Composed of three geometric shapes, each with a hollow and a convex face. The work presents a levitated reduced planetary system made up of the earth, moon and sun.

The world of construction offers an inexhaustible source of forms in which weight and gravity are inseparably linked to lifting tools. William Anastasi repurposes a pully from its usual function, creating suspended ready-made sound piece encased in Plexiglass. It echoes Christoph Weber’s work in which two suspended concrete blocks hang on either side of a wall, thanks to two ropes that hold them, balancing each other in suspension.

If suspension is associated, via the mobile or the machine, with a constructed system of which it is the articulation, it also incorporates through the anti-form sculpture of the 1960s -1970s, more organic and fluid forms. Isa Melsheimer’s ceramic suspension entitled Feston [6] refers to garlands of fresh or sculpted flowers and leaves used as architectural ornamentation, while also evoking the forms of a rosary, a spine, or a vine. Elodie Seguin’s paper Dentelles occupy the space like optico-kinetic partitions, vibrating as the visitor moves. These lacy panels surreptitiously alter the space.

Suspension is sometimes the result of a prosaic gesture, derived from domestic or everyday forms. Franz Erhard Walther’s sculpture Sechs Ummantelungen is inspired by the cloakroom or dressing room: six suits are suspended in succession, like a minimalist wardrobe to be activated as a part of a performance. Walther’s allusion to textiles finds in Diego Bianchi’s strange skins, a more familiar form of suspension: linen hung out to dry on a line, a fragment of intimacy exposed in the public space. Exhibited for the first time, a wooden mobile perforated with holes by Miriam Cahn is also a musical instrument echoing the artist’s performances of the 80s and 90s.

A dimension of sound and vibration runs through the suspended works; inhabited by air and breath, they function like potential wind instruments. Francisco Tropa suspends a bottle of wine vertically from a guitar string (Phare). The transparency of the glass allows the light to pass through - the work becomes a landmark in space, like a star in the sky. Contrasting this single musical string, Harald Klingelhöller transforms the sound of his own voice into volume, along a vertical wire that asks: « Will you be there? ». Aluminum strips of varying lengths serve as a graphic representation of the fluctuations in his intonation.

Language then penetrates suspension, akin to banderoles projecting a conversation into space. Zbyněk Baladrán’s Dialectical figure suspends threads and ribbons of paper in the air from which he hangs pieces of text, clay objects and images. Vladimír Kokolia, a former professor of Baladrán, created Archon as a tribute to his late friend and artist Ján Mančuška (1972-2011). Folding a sheet of paper into the shape of a polyhedron, he then half-opens and hangs it in front of a window. Illuminated by the light, it evokes the memory of a face, in the way one might discern recognizable forms in the clouds. In this manner, suspension merges both astral and terrestrial dimensions.

—Sandrine Djerouet and Hélène Meisel