ART by Nathalie Junod Ponsard
Set within the Grande Halle de La Villette and its grey metal structures, this sculptural installation responds to the site’s history: now a cultural venue, it was once a cattle market. Embodying the concepts of torsion, envelopment and suspension, the central platform features a diaphanous installation that gives rise to astonishing forms within a new structure. The installation takes blood as its central theme.
Suspended in mid-air, the work "Mutation sanguine" integrates with the space by cascading down from above in waves of transparent or translucent drapery, like a moment of weightlessness, revealing a sense of torsion. The blood-red colour envelops the suspended ‘body’, whilst the cosmetic pink that accompanies it evokes flesh. Emitting a faint sound, the work comes to life. The moving air produces regular crackling sounds within a unique immersive experience, spreading throughout the structures.
The light falling on the material of this tormented sculpture reveals flashes of brilliance, elusive glimmers, and saturated yet translucent scarlet hues. The eye is captivated; the body is immersed. Throughout the day, as the light shifts, bands tinged first with red and then with pink spill out and successively cast their scarlet shadows onto the immaculate white of the floor.
The work "Mutation sanguine" draws inspiration from Baroque aesthetics and the aura of a floating body, as seen in certain 16th-century ceiling frescoes. From the fall of a body to the fall of an object, this notion is present in the more contemporary works of certain artists, such as Yves Klein (‘Le Saut’), Marcel Duchamp, Ai Weiwei (falling objects), as well as in the performances of Chris Burden.
Red, like a magnetic field, is a gesture of fusion or transfer. The Grande Halle de La Villette resonates with these lingering echoes of a place once filled with living bodies and carcasses, like a memory suspended within it.
