Off-site exhibitions

Opening
Sunday March 30th

les Alyscamps Av. des Alyscamps, 13200 Arles

on the edge

How to convey the signals from the past? How to perceive whispers on the edge of silence? By attending to one’s step. By lighting uncertain lanterns along the way. This is what  Florence Grundeler proposes, invited by the town hall of Arles to explore the Alyscamps necropolis in her own oeuvre. 

The Alyscamps, a fossilized river where times mingle, on the edge of the city. The stone sarcophagi float along a path that once led to Rome, still winding towards an elsewhere. A silent and motionless flow ever in flux. The passage of time, the fluctuations of pain and joy. A stream of mythical and living waters that ooze on rainy days, rising from underground water tables.

The Alyscamps, a shifting terrain where the living escort the dead, through memory, dreams and toil. To build, destroy, rebuild, reuse, stack, cover, excavate, restore. To observe. To perceive. To drift through strata of time, gestures and desires.

«à l’écart» traces a singular path in this labyrinth of remains whose long history inspired the artist, ever attentive to the tremors of time. Her works, like vessels, collect the enigmatic sap of visible and invisible traces, refraining all signs of assertion, despite their material vigor.

Emplaced or suspended, they touch the walls, skim the ground, inhabiting space like breath, humble and quiet. Their delicate variations reveal the hinges and gaps of the journey, their frank materiality animates the void, in dialogue with the accidents of architecture. Responding to each other in a meditative journey, her works call for another look at the site, slow, patient, open, on the edge.

At the beginning of the tour, the “paratemps” (time screens) measure the temporal waves at work underground, in the heart of the archaeological layers. In the Sainte Accurse chapel, inks instinctively grope towards the faded walls, while the «history of time» hums its canticle of ruins.

«The days» follow the drift of the sarcophagi, like the scattered steps of a broken staircase. Once the portal is crossed, two other “paratemps” point towards a present-absence. Streaming down the wall of the Mollégès chapel, a large hanging transports the eye in its powerful flow, half liquid, half ardent. A moment of relief and exultation before approaching the church. 

At the heart of the sanctuary, the works patiently play with forms, sometimes shaped by light, sometimes hidden in the shadows. Intertwining geometric figures and organic masses, they resonate like voices without words. Rolls form an offering in a niche, a circle widens the space of a chapel, strips of cloth cross the light of an apse, a sphere splashes the flagstones, as if fallen from a tower lantern. In the crypt, paving stones rise from the ground like astonished relics.

And the thread, the leitmotif of the exhibition, flourishes in the deserted alveoli that once housed a tomb. The thread that stretches towards elsewhere, the thread that unwinds an indiscernible story, the thread that weaves a story of time. At the exit, “bâtons-vigies” shepherds’ staffs invite you to continue on the path. Or to retrace your steps and reconnect with the thread of the journey. On the edge.

        Anne Louyot, curator