Intérieurs (Interiors)
CHARLOTTE SEIDEL

interieurs_0

Opening on Saturday, December 09th from 6pm to 9pm
09.12 – 23.12.2017 and 09.01 – 27.01.2018
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Maybe you won’t believe this. A little clover has grown out of the stem of another four-leaved clover linked itself to a five-leaved clover (366, 2017). What incredible luck and fortunate coincidence were combined to allow for such a godsend ? Between two downpours, surprized by a ray of sun, a rainbow has been formed. Now it has been brought into the gallery (arc, 2017), just as fortunately as the clovers, while the sun captured on film kisses a tree, imposing its authoritative presence by erasing part of the trunk (small kiss, 2017). Looking up to the ceiling, one perceives an enigmatic, stunningly simple sentence. Addressed to a solitary, elevated spectator, its evocative power fills the nostrils and brings him/her down to the ground: « summer rain on asphalt » (toi et moi, 2017). Water has been poured into two glasses; the hem of liquid ready to gush forward is held in a fragile balance on the crystal surface to merge in a febrile trouble spot (nothing ever happened, 2014). Another quite as enigmatic phenomenon can also be perceived: plants are shaken by silent laughter (folie, 2017). From the Taiwanese jungle to the German forest, what kind of a strange sweep of gestures, facts and absent objects – a priori – of any quality, has Charlotte Seidel choreographed here?

The artist has taken luck into her hands. She has searched for as many four-leaved clovers as there are days in the year. She has looked – and we look with her – for « what is the most difficult to discover »1. She has come across what is neither a region nor a locality, even less so a spectacle. “Insignificant”, “without truth, without reality, without a secret”2, with neither subject nor object, “with no event”3, where apprehending everyday life seems impossible. The moment one lives everyday life, it remains “unperceived”4. Could this be one of the reasons for Charlotte Seidel’s commitment ? Steeped in an everydayness that we ignore, we can only make sense of the ordinary by enrolling it into a coherent whole, a posteriori. Besides, Maurice Blanchot acknowledges that, at most, we can “review everyday life”5. Impossible to see for the first time; once it has taken place, it has already been missed. Do the works presented here allow us to review it?

In the gallery’s basement, the walls breathe, and the tide seeps through what could be assimilated to the crypt of an Early Christian church. Charlotte Seidel has chosen to display an empty cloche here, which no longer protects anything. The glass is blurred by traces of mineral salts, suggesting evaporation. And not just any evaporation : that of water from Lourdes. The miracle has disappeared. All that remains is the mark of an absence, presented as an apparition (sans titre, 2017). Would that also be what the empty seat, still warm from a vanished presence, suggests (Joseph, 2005/2017)? The artist asks us to believe her, in the manner we believe in the everyday rituals that rule our lives. Coins have rusted on a sheet of watercolour paper. They draw a deficient composition, dancing on a musical score on which the notes are spoiled, leaving the mark of their passage as if they were at the bottom of a fountain (Il arrive qu’on aperçoive les étoiles, 2017). The circles formed by oxidation remind us of the ochre stains on old photographs yellowed by time – the time it takes to make them disappear and lead us think of what has been (Yesterday, 2013). At the same time, travelling (2013) takes us right up close to a blurred image whose very slow apparition almost extinguishes it. Do Charlotte Seidel’s works honour something aside from themselves? Could their manifestation serve an exterior finality ? Her works bear something religious within themselves and appeal to our credulity. Located in our everyday life, born from the most indistinguishable ordinariness, they allow us to review the vacuity of our beliefs, our superstitious gestures and forms of bigotry. Like memento mori placed in a space inhabited by something similar to the sacredness of a church, these works reveal the obsolete beauty of the ordinary, the incapacity to escape time’s grasp, and the vanity of having believed in it.

Sophie Lapalu
Translated in English by Emmelene Landon


1 Maurice Blanchort, La Parole quotidienne (1962), in L’Entretien infini, Gallimard, Paris, 1969, p. 355.
2 Ibid., p. 357.
3 Ibid., p. 363.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 358.




int1

Charlotte Seidel, arc, 2017, wood, paint, 120 x 4 x 1 cm, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int2

Charlotte Seidel, small kiss, 2017, digital color photography, Canson 310g paper, frame, glass, 78,5 x 53 cm (framed), edition of 3 + 1 AP
365, 2016 – 2017, herbarium, sheets of 365 four leaves clovers, five and six clover leaves on conservation paper, archive box, 30 x 22 x 11 cm,
unique piece
366, 2017, clovers, conservation paper, frame, anti UV glass, 29 x 21,5 cm (framed), unique piece
nothing ever happened, 2014, video, format 16 : 9, color, mute, 3’55’’, edition of 5 + 2 AP. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int3

Charlotte Seidel, small kiss, 2017, digital color photography, Canson 310g paper, frame, glass, 78,5 x 53 cm (framed), edition of 3 + 1 AP
365, 2016 – 2017, herbarium, sheets of 365 four leaves clovers, five and six clover leaves on conservation paper, archive box, 30 x 22 x 11 cm,
unique piece
366, 2017, clovers, conservation paper, frame, anti UV glass, 29 x 21,5 cm (framed), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int4

Charlotte Seidel, small kiss, 2017, digital color photography, Canson 310g paper, frame, glass, 78,5 x 53 cm (framed), edition of 3 + 1 AP
365, 2016 – 2017, herbarium, sheets of 365 four leaves clovers, five and six clover leaves on conservation paper, archive box, 30 x 22 x 11 cm,
unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int7

Charlotte Seidel, nothing ever happened, 2014, video, format 16 : 9, color, mute, 3’55’’, edition of 5 + 2 AP
arc, 2017, wood, paint, 120 x 4 x 1 cm, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique piece
Sans titre, 2017, dust, fixative, frame, anti reflect glass, 32,5 x 42,7 cm (framed), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int6

Charlotte Seidel, Il arrive qu’on aperçoive les étoiles, 2017, watercolor paper, rust, frame, anti reflect glass, 34,5 x 26,2 cm (framed) each, unique pieces. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int5

Charlotte Seidel, Yesterday, 2013, diptych, photographies, frame, glass, 21,5 x 29,5 cm (framed), unique piece
toi et moi, 2017, dry letter transfer (on wall), 22 x 3 mm, wood stool, variable dimensions, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique piece
Sans titre (Lourdes) 2017, glass bell, evaporated Lourdes water,
11 x 25 cm, limited editions
(variable dimensions), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int8

Charlotte Seidel, Yesterday, 2013, diptych, photographies, frame, glass, 21,5 x 29,5 cm (framed), unique pieces. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int9

Charlotte Seidel, toi et moi, 2017, dry letter transfer (on wall), 22 x 3 mm, wood stool, variable dimensions, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int10

Charlotte Seidel, Sans titre (Lourdes) 2017, glass bell,
evaporated Lourdes water, 11 x 25 cm, limited editions
(variable dimensions), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int11

Charlotte Seidel, Sans titre (Lourdes) 2017, glass bell,
evaporated Lourdes water, 11 x 25 cm, limited editions
(variable dimensions), unique piece. Photo © Aurélien Mole


int12

Charlotte Seidel, travelling, 2013, video, format 16 : 9, color, mute, 12’46’’, edition of 5 + 2 AP
Joseph, 2005 – 2017 – poufs, electric heating system, thermostat, 36 x 36 x 36 cm each, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique pieces.
Photo © Aurélien Mole


int13

Charlotte Seidel, travelling, 2013, video, format 16 : 9, color, mute, 12’46’’, edition of 5 + 2 AP
Joseph, 2005 – 2017 – poufs, electric heating system, thermostat, 36 x 36 x 36 cm each, limited editions (variable dimensions), unique pieces.
Photo © Aurélien Mole


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73-75 rue Quincampoix 75003 Paris France
Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 1 pm // 2 pm – 7 pm
tel : +33 (0)1 42 77 05 97
www.galeriedohyanglee.com

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