We regret to announce that, due to a lack of staff due to the sanitary situation, the exhibition 2 + 2 OR THE INFINITE OF THE POSSIBLE :Alain JANSSENS & Daniela CORRADINI, Dominique CASTRONOVO & Bernard SECONDINI within the framework of the BIP Off 2020 will remain closed on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October.

At the Emulation, the programming for the year 2020 was developed around the theme TREE, i.e. the complex relationship that living beings have with their natural environment. For our participation in bipOFF, this ontological questioning was extended to the notion of perception of Time in the Universe, apprehended through the mathematical language applied to the image in movement.

Two different but complementary approaches were favoured. One is intuitive, the other, “oscillates between poetry, absurdity, derision and humor”:  photographs by Alain Janssens are exhibited in the Renaissance room, selected among those that marked his career; they are coupled with a selection of inks from his partner, Daniela Corradini, who is a creative graphic designer.  A space for a multimedia experience take place in ‘hORS piSTE ‘ (off the track), which will be led by a second couple, Dominique Castronovo and Bernard Secondini, from the film Une seconde d’éternité (One second of eternity) (1”, 1970) by Marcel Broodthaers, screened as a loop, in which the insertion of very short black frames, constituted from a Suite P keeping only the numbers 0 and 1, create a permanent stroboscopic effect (once obtained, thanks to digital technology, the synchronisation with the film strip media).

The first two mentioned are ” … in the grip, even in surprise, / In the countryside, in an awakening / In the availability of the ordinary”. The next two, immersed “in a fictional and minimalist context”, together they pursue a heuristic, “based on a visual game or nonsense, the arts and sciences, [which] tend to propose [a meaning] to things, in spite of the certainty that this research will not succeed”. Some are working to instantly capture the moment, the others aim for the moment captured eternally by means of a video piece during one day. For the bipOFF, the addition of the work of the four protagonists and their respective explorations allows the opening, in an exponential way, of the field of points of view. While the regular use of these ‘2 + 2’ in writing or the frequency of the texts accompanying them in their professional practice leads them, through the mastered use of words and their plural semantics, towards a form of confluence (albeit fortuitous on the part of the quartet) and to wish to share their efforts with the public.

For Alain and Daniela, the bush investigations take place during “walk[s] under the trees”, dear to the poet Philippe Jaccottet, whom they appreciate, to “the very light of the wood”, all the sensory antennas are deployed. For Dominique and Bernard, it would be more like a ‘laboratory’, out of a “cloud of ideas”, based on the finding of absence, of a gap to be filled, and via hybrid formulas, in series, hypotheses, tests, of prototypes which integrate a temporality for the complete vision of their rooms, while hoping to provoke in the visitor a state of contemplation. Which is not without bringing us back to the vital sphere of the other couple.

“This is where eternity begins,” writes the second duet as highlighted in its instructions  “Where to see it can still emerge / And branch out into deep (fertile) resonances”, the first one adds tandem, a few days after the closing of Hélène Tilman’s exhibition, entitled “Ici le temps s’arrête » (Here the time stops). It’s as if we emerged for Emulation and the artists she invites, an infinite of possibilities.

Anne-Françoise Lemaire

NB: quotations in quotation marks are taken from the documentation provided by the artists; between brackets are the author’s additions.