Between two worlds
Between two worlds
"Every exhibition is a linking, a succession of movements between artworks, bodies and spaces. It is a bond between the inside - a subjectivity - and the outside, which is identical for everyone and yet unique to each person.
Mathilde Roman
Rendez-vous is the encounter between Belgian artist Jean-Marie Bytebier and Fontevraud. It's also the public's encounter with his work, presented in two distinct locations: within the permanent collections of the Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art and in the village's former presbytery. The artist has been offered two different exhibition spaces in which to install his works –one a museum with its contemporary exhibition display, the other a domestic setting with 18th-century wood panelling. Some of these works were specially created during an artistic residency at Fontevraud in December 2023, where he was able to immerse himself in the premises, the architecture, and the surrounding nature.
Pretext-landscape
Rendez-vous is all about encounters, gaze encounters. First and foremost, the artist's eye on the collection of the Museum of Modern Art –particularly the pre-modern and 'classic modern' artworks–, on the works belonging to the Fontevraud Abbey history, as well as on the surrounding landscape. The landscape –which differs from nature since the artist has already transformed it–is the starting point of this exhibition.
Although he is attracted to classical painting –especially the landscape paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries– his approach and his research are those of a contemporary artist. The way he reworks his iconographic references –selecting details, enlarging them, turning the motif upside down, removing the horizon line, scratching or cutting out certain parts– transforms the original work. In this way, he metamorphoses it, making it say other things. Hence, a painting in the museum, a fresco in the abbey or the presbytery garden, these artworks and locations that we think we know so well, are opening up to new interpretations.
In Jean-Marie Bytebier's art, mimetic forms (which aim to reproduce reality) disintegrate, architectural fragments dissolve into organic matter, vegetation becomes waves or mountains. His works combine photographs, impressions gathered during walks and references from art history, but these references are blurred. On the surface of the canvas and on the sheet of paper, the fragments of images all have the same value, reinforcing the ambiguity of interpretation. Their treatment in pictorial masses and strokes, but also the raw canvas or the wooden panel that appears in certain works, the cotton weft that sometimes emerges beneath the pictorial layer, itself enhanced by the visible movements of the brush, all these clues signal the artist's interest in the material aspects of the creative process. These reconfigurations, at the heart of Jean-Marie Bytebier's practice, lead the viewer to understand how the artist transposes his notes (written or visual) using paint or graphite to create images on the verge of abstraction. What remains though is the haziness of meaning. For it is in vain that the onlooker seeks for a stable point of view. Perception is deepened not by the effect of illusionist perspectives or firmly structured compositions, but by plunging into the mingled colours, the mixed pictorial matter, the heterogeneous references that question mimesis and render the motif unrecognisable.
Movement of the gaze
Therefore, Rendez-vous is an invitation to the audience whose gaze is solicited. In Jean-Marie Bytebier's paintings and drawings, there are elements familiar to us, some we think we recognise (the pareidolia effect) and others that remain strange. One must admit it. We have to accept that art touches us in the same way that it remains mysterious. Rendez-vous helps to clarify certain forms in relation to others, to enrich certain artworks in contact with others, in contact with the audience and the places in which they are exhibited. A rendezvous is about moving towards a meeting place, towards the other. The effects of zooming and (re)framing create a back-and-forth movement in which the viewer is caught up. In a rendezvous, there is always an element of surprise, of the expected and the unexpected. No one knows in advance what is going to happen. In addition to the openness located within the artist's canvases, there is also the openness that takes place around the works themselves.
Integrated into the work itself, the border of white paint present in many of Jean-Marie Bytebier's canvases acts as a frame directing the eye and indicating the audience that they are in the presence of a work of art. The frame makes it possible to identify objects and helps us to understand them. The frame reassures as much as it shapes vision. However, what matters is what escapes, what is played out in the space between the paintings, but also between the work and its viewer. The movement of the viewer opens up new sensations and interpretations.
The presentation of works by Jean-Marie Bytebier within the museum's permanent collections is an invitation to onlookers to wander around, on the lookout for connections. It duplicates the concept of the Fontevraud Museum of Modern Art, based on dialogues between works and objects from heterogeneous cultures and temporalities. As with the Belgian artist's works, in which different temporalities coexist on the same surface, in the museum the experience of looking leads the audience to experience the coexistence of a plurality of worlds in the here and now of their visit, and thus to reconsider the perception of their own environment.
The way the works are exhibited shapes our physical relationship with them as much as our understanding of them, and the relationship artworks have with their context. This context encompasses the venue in which the exhibition is taking place, all the works on display, and the general environment. The display may be the same for everyone, but the reception of the works varies. To make this point even clearer, the two exhibition spaces house a homogeneous body of works. In such manner, Rendez-vous explores how the works are perceived by the audience. In the village's former presbytery, in a more intimate space with natural lighting and an open outlook, the paintings are not perceived in the same way as on the walls of the museum. Hanging them above fireplaces, in cupboards, or in an environment made of 18th century wood panelling changes the way we look at these works, encouraging the metamorphoses so dear to André Malraux. The presence of moulded wooden panels, for example, echoes the edges of the paintings and questions the status of this object as a work of art. Another example: the proximity of a window reinforces the confusion between what is represented on the canvas and the outdoor. Similarly, when placed in a dark corner of a cupboard, the images are gradually revealed and require a different kind of attention than the illuminated canvases hanging on the walls of the Modern Art Museum.
Places of possibilities
The aim of Rendez-vous is to question what we want people to see and what they are willing to see. The exhibition and Jean-Marie Bytebier's works are places where the gaze is reconfigured. The interior plays with the exterior. Suddenly, visitors have the impression that the landscape they are looking at through the window is an imitation of a painting by Jean-Marie Bytebier. Boundaries are blurred, and the natural element common to us all shifts and becomes subjective. Memory of an image that the viewer takes with him/her before moving on to the next painting; an impression that the onlooker carries from one place to another, which is inevitably altered by the move.
When positioned alongside similar works, Jean-Marie Bytebier's paintings and drawings acquire an air of déjà vu, even a strangeness that moves the intimate. When placed alongside works from the museum's collection and belonging to the Fontevraud Abbey’s history, the attentive viewer discovers links, more or less visible, sometimes even secret, between them. The venues of the exhibition, by allowing new apprehensions, become spaces where new narratives can develop, places of possibilities.