Guillaume Leblon and Olivier Michelon

Does Guillaume Leblon’s work need any introduction when Alessandro Rabottini, the curator of his exhibition at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, takes care of it at length here?

The temptation to refrain from it is all the greater as Leblon’s work cannot easily be reduced to generalities, to a repeatable modus operandi, even though at least two critics have identified something « uncanny » about it -which is not saying much.

Even within the same exhibition, a slippage may occur from a very structured and manufactured universe to another one, more fragmentary, full of more or less secret clues, difficult to ascertain as a ruin, a project, or the ruin of a project. An example is the wall built around a partition in the Dusseldorf Kunstverein and whose plaster blocks were methodically hit with a sledgehammer. At a time when the least gesture in art may appear as the reuse or the citation of another, Leblon manages to create a degree of confusion in our memories.

To disconcert us even further and undermine any potential commentary, he has written an « Interview » with Thomas Boutoux -a work for the stage but in which they seem to have put a lot of themselves, so to speak.

Our own interview will not be an act, and as part of this rare opportunity to speak in the midst of a freshly discovered exhibition, we will be able to explore a few paths without trying to show the way, in the company of curator and critic Olivier Michelon.