Le ver creuse ses tunnels dans La pomme par laquelle je bois.

As we enter the matter

From the backstage of this work, writing about the actions carried out is less about recounting how they unfolded than about following their persistences and transformations. 

As the fruition of the PRAXIS program, this exhibition is a retrospective journey through a continuing collaborative process that the artist has been pursuing with matter and material for over a decade.The collection that accompanies it comprises fragments, scraps, and found objects, gathered over the years and reappearing time and again in different projects.

Held in three rooms, Le ver creuse ses tunnels dans La pomme par laquelle je bois thus gives shape to the physical, formal, and temporal convergence of an artistic approach, a practice, and a collection.

Neither a beginning nor an end, the exhibition offers a transience of what remains ongoing: a space of focus where past actions, present materials, and future possibilities are brought together, mingle, and entwine.

Le ver [The Worm]

Stems, materials gathered and assembled, suspended and arranged forms: as it infiltrates and spreads, this aerial network—which feels as much like a mesh as it does a circulatory system—invites us to slow down and pay attention to both its proximities and convolutions. Following, our gaze can trace the path of its ligatures and mutations.

Something, here, persists, lingers, surfaces, without ever fully revealing itself.

Another scene then opens. In this invisible mythology, the figure of the worm does not appear merely as a motif, but as a principle of creation and, further, of interpretation. The worm evokes an underground progression, a quiet, burrowing process, an advance through branching, forking, and breaches. It does not impose an order; it eases a passage.

Lieur [Linker] — or, as Maude suggests, «that friend who links» —, the worm acts as a subtle connecting force, emerging between forms to make their relationships perceptible. Rather than an isolated figure, it reveals a way of approaching the exhibition, both in the details of its individual sequences and, in its overall unfolding. This unifying force weaves through the exhibition space; the elements there seem to respond to one another according to an organic, sensitive, almost synaptic logic.

La pomme [The Apple]

Like concentric circles, the exhibition and performative installation titles are nestled within the same heart with La pomme par laquelle je bois. La pomme becomes the centre, the core from which the project unfolds, deepening and imbricating its successive layers. Although it invites us into its heart — to the main stage — the piece does not place us in front of a fixed centre. Rather, it draws us into a realm of interconnections where matter answers matter; where forms brush against one another; where fragments present contrasting fragilities: where their coexistence becomes a vehicle for narratives and transmission. At the centre of this lattice, La pomme does not act as a physical incarnation, but as a hollow space, riddled with passages and tunnels, through which something moves, is held and is bound. Thus, seeking the heart does not mean going straight to the centre, but rather observing what, from within, is already working its way outward.

Le temps [Time]

Far from being a mere collection of personal archives, the exhibition is a prolongation of a long-term creative process, in which the studio shifts to expand into the exhibition space itself. Time works quietly there. It passes through matter, settles within it, leaves its mark on surfaces, and inflects its states. Unbound from its boxes and cases, the collection unfolds throughout the space; fragments, debris, and found objects continue to move, transform, and reappear in new relationships. Time slows down while the elements continue to play their part. Inventory is not just about conservation, but about letting time do its work and observing, from one phase to the next, how the materials continue their own processes.

The exhibition brings into focus the gentle activity which sees an object come into being and persist. Each element holds within it several durations: those of gathering, care, movement, and arrangement, but also holds temporalities that go beyond the limits of the studio and sequencing of the exhibition. Every area, every fragment is permeated by its own experiences, stories, and transformations. What we experience is not a finite composition, but states of being shaped by the passage of time, to which we bear witness.

— M.A. Marleau

Translated from the original French by Coco Simon Finken, with assistance from DeepL.