Une Image, Vincent Olinet

About

VINCENT OLINET

Une image

January 20th – March 23rd, 2019

Opening, Sunday January 20th, performance from 4pm

            For this new exhibition, Une image, Vincent Olinet conceived an installation in which time passing and relation to space are a key question. He considered the relation between immersion into the artwork and its approach like a space in progress without constraints. Image is sculpture, sculpture is time and volume exists beyond what it offers to see.

« …To use time as a material is to use the perception of time. To play with the perception of material is to influence the global perception of representation.. It’s the mind that twists, manipulates and completes our perception like an optical illusion visible from one point of view. »

            On the gallery’s walls, a very colorful, baroque and exuberant wall paper, where flowers and bouquet seem to be in relief, where mouldings are only paintbrushes’ strokes… It appears like a sedimentation of several layer of images, a sort of trompe l’oeil with multiple levels. In the gallery, the walls become as many successive flat surfaces, as if one went through several screens. Going forward into the space, one penetrates the scenery, goes deeper in the image like approaching a sculpture by one side. Sculpture is in that extend unique since there’s always a hidden part. One can’t embrace it in its entirety by one look. In the same manner, the exhibition is built according to two point of view, the path back unveiling a new perspective.

            On pedestals, one perceive soon the ephemeral nature of bowls of fruits and vases. Vases, glasses, carafes are not made of glass but out of ice and are indeed slowly melting before our eyes, soon leaving some fruits, wine stains…

« … Ice and glass, water, crystal are somehow linked and related in a spiritual path. Switching one with the other, consists in creating the surprise of misuse. Using iced water instead of glass is after all carrying on with the Flemish masters’ search, the invention of still life and its integration/capture on the canvas. Time is suspended in a bouquet, a grape rots, the bowl disappears. »

            Maintenant and 15h40, are two hours-long videos of melting compositions. They remind in an even more obvious way the Flemish masters’ still life from the XVIIth century and their will to seize time and death in their representations of vanitas.

« There is no illusion, just a lure simply improper to our retinal persistence and our aversion for slowness. However, it is a real weave, an event in all its lenght, that dissolves the scenery while creating a new one… The moment of the artwork is the one when it’s being seen. »

            Vincent Olinet was born in 1981, the year of the left-wing arrival in french politics, the beginning of a new cycle, but also in a certain way the end of hope, of a possibility of change, a kind of collective desillusion, that seemed from that moment on to seize the epoch. This dull landscape frames doubtlessly Vincent Olinet’s creating context.

            Since approximately 15 years, with obstination and humour, Vincent Olinet seems, in some kind of reaction to « lost illusions », to be constantly searching to re-invent the world, to re-enchant it, in some kind of reaction to « lost illusions ».

            Successively marine carpenter, baker, marble designer, jeweler, photographer, lumberjack, painter.. Vincent Olinet seizes willingly carftsman’s tools and materials, entertain himself in copying their gestures (without however obeying to technical, esthetical or functional obligations). He takes simple and universal forms over and, with diligence and ingenuity « re-makes ».

            He creates marvelous, enchanting that turns out to be made of illusions, subterfuge and vain promises. A wonderful world of fairy tales created out of cardboard, artificial life of luxury ou « vie de château », melting down birthday cakes … Après moi le déluge, Pas encore mon Histoire, Je ne peux pas faire de miracles, Il était deux fois… as many meaningful artworks’ title that suggest some tales whose outcome is left to the public.

            Graduated with highest honours from the ENSBA (national art School) of Lyon in 2005, Vincent Olinet has been since in residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2006/2007 and at the Cité des arts in Paris in 2014/2016.

                  He recently presented a solo exhibitions at Château de Montbazillac and Château de Campagne (2018). He took part to in several group exhibitions in France but also and abroad (Kunsthalle Darmstadt in Germany ; MAC/VAL Vitry, France ; Musée International des Arts Modestes de Sète ; Palais de Tokyo ; Cité de la céramique de Sèvres, Kunstmuseum of Wolfsburg in Germany, Linz in Austria and Berne in Switzerland).

In 2015 he participated at Ube’s biennale (Japan) during which he won the Chamber of Commerce and Industry prize.

            The artist thanks the Fundament Foundation, Dordogne’s cultural office, Les Rives de l’Art organization, Monbazillac Castle, AmArt Films and the Pavillon Blanc Henri Molina for their support.