Thomas Salet, toward poetical grammar

January 11 - February 26, 2014

 

The minute i write those lines, the exhibition does not have a title. It’s probably better that way, because you have to immerse in the work and not try to restrain it. First, have a look. Then will come the reading. What is important to Thomas Salet is to offer a statement, since his process is obviously in making. The different series discuss as time goes by. Plenty small and large scale sculptures are displayed on large tables, seemingly in a mess, but this disorder is a fake. You think you see porous raw and fragile plaster shapes. You feel like reaching out and touching, stroking these white skins which are nothing but ceramics. Are they organic ? Are they guts or corals ? Are they cavities from inside the earth or extracts of scientifical research on DNA ? We’ll never know. They are curiously simplified bulbs, skulls, blooms, soft mechanics, unknown bodies that connect and combine. 

Elsewhere, white sheets of paper show constellations and geometrical shapes linked together by sewing thread. Thomas Salet opens up space to the infinite, as the star spangled sky. A whole galaxy comes out, unless it’s all about a venous blood system. Something about it reminds of a labyrinth you can surprisingly not get lost in. Here, human presence is the Ariadne’s thread : by piercing the paper with a needle, Thomas Salet draws real scale handprints. 

You can think of both Hans Arp’s work and aborigine paintings. On another hand, the work can allude to Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic units. The actual point is that this practice takes its time, in a japanese manner : the ink settles, the paper absorbs it, outlines appear on the surface. 

 

Léa Bismuth

 

Léa Bismuth is an art critic, member of AICA. Since 2006, she has been writing in Art press (Paris). 

She is also an independant curator.