Mon horizontalité

From 5th July to 23rd August, untilthen hosts the group exhibition ‘Mon horizontalité’ (My Horizontality) conceived by curator Julie Boukobza who brings together Jean-Marie Appriou, Laetitia Badaut Haussman, Simone Fattal, Anthea Hamilton (photo above), Than Hussein Clark, Caroline Mesquita , Marina Pinsky, Emilie Pitoiset, Torbjørn Rødland, Maxime Thieffine, Philipp Timischl  et France Valliccioni. 

‘There is no better catalyst for horizontality than fear, it immediately floors you, moves you and pushes you. That is in bed as well as in your head. Everything is quite favourable to horizontality these days. Our favourite position is in front of the computer, with our legs crossed and on the table, our back hunched in an adjustable, spine-twisting armchair: a new comfortable horizontality. There are others. What about the single-handed inversion of smartphones from reading vertically to horizontally? Everything changes to landscape. We have already seen this: all these issues of parapet, these vanishing points in paintings by Raphaël; this stoic Young Woman with Unicorn conceals a lakeside landscape. Outlines versus sfumato. That old battle. What is the goal of Alberti’s headache-inducing theory of perspective? What do we interpret from this landscape in the background in the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin by Van Eyck? Interpretation is disrupted by three columns. That God’s territory is not human territory? We might have guessed. Big thumbs up to Warhol for having definitively put an end to backgrounds in his canvases, daubing all his idols with gold, Marilyn, Jackie, virtually identical to Giotto and his Christ Pantocrator. But I’m digressing. Too much detail. A mental game. A ‘cosa mentale.’ Should we set passive horizontality against active verticality? Has Proust’s great-aunt, Aunt Léonie’s mother, could not be more dynamic from her bed, in Combray, always lying down because of her uncertain state of heartache –although reinforcing through repetition the memory of her governess Françoise. “But I think that I heard the garden gate bell, go and see who can be outside in weather like this.” Bells like this do not exist any more. Since then the world has become accessible from my bed via a screen with definition that leaves nothing to be desired. We can stream American series, watch the several obligatory minutes of YouPorn. This very horizontal world is my world. My horizontality.’  Fabrice Paineau(chief editor DOUBLE magazine)