Not everything that makes you laugh is humor. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is never completely devoid of humor. It is intelligence that stirs these paradoxes and regales us, discreetly, with an ineffable thrill. The dimensions of the Devals gallery, at the Palais-Royal, emerge from this complex equation where the smile, the cogito and the drive for appropriation intersect. The exhibition is titled Filler holes, from parody to pastiche. First centerpiece: The Stopper by François Morellet (1926-2016).
On the flyer serving as a certificate of authenticity accompanying his work, the artist wrote: “If there is one dramatic situation among all, it is that of the collector who no longer has the slightest place in his home to exhibit a work of art! Apparently there is no longer a place to host a painting (even less a sculpture) when cruelly the desire and the means are not lacking! Well the STOPPER, superb very contemporary sculpture, will know how to , find its place. It will know how to slip modestly between paintings, for which it can even serve as a frame, this accessory so often forgotten, today, by negligent artists.”
Everything is true in this advertisement, from modesty to usefulness, passing through the permanence of the contemporary. The superb is not exaggerated, because it is powder-coated aluminum, black, 80 x 80 x 2.5. This sculpture, made up of three segments, is inserted between two or three paintings that it does not accompany like an escort-girl or a chaperone. No, she’s more of an exhibition friend, a biennale colleague, a museum friend. Printed in 20 copies in 1996, The Stopper is present today at Smak in Ghent, at Mamco in Geneva, and cannot be found on the market. Or at prices…
NFTs, or the humor of art
Alexandre, the director of the Devals gallery, plans to change the hanging of the works associated with the Stand-in by Morellet. The day I passed by the gallery, three drawings by Sol LeWitt had found their place there. The following weeks may be fluorescent paintings by Peter Halley, the author of The Geometry Crisis and Other Essays, or works by the infinite and censored rebel Edward Kienholz (1927-1994), or works by Richard Long, the walker who moves pebbles without putting them back in their place. Bernar Venet, the comic of immensity, will be there. Without forgetting François Morellet who will play side-by-side with himself.
What won’t move is the Plaster Surrogates (plaster substitutes) by Allan McCollum. Second centerpiece of the exhibition, this composition is hung on the wall to the right as you enter. Conceived in 1978, these are plagiarisms of monochromes of different sizes intended to be arranged by the gallery owner or the collector, so that, like the definitions/methods inaugurated by Claude Rutault in 1973, the creator entrusts the purchaser with the finitude of the evolving work. Not shrinking from any transgression, Rutault and McCollum worked together in 2016. The 43 canvases stacked by Rutault serving as support (and surface) for the Collection of Four Perfect Vehicles of McCollum; four funerary vases, ultimate vehicles of the ashes?
The reflections / actions of these two artists may have seemed comical, schoolboys, ironic, they are proving today premonitory at the dawn of the new era announced by the NFT (non-fungible token). Indeed, contrary to what speculators and their somewhat overeager despisers have imagined, the value and interest of NFTs do not reside in the artistic quality of the digital image but in the conceptual strength that the “non-fungible token “offers our humor to art. Possession of the work is a solitary orgasm. And the reality of the work is that of a momentary vision, it vanishes when it escapes the gaze. It only exists when you think about it.