Mixed media installation with -dead tree, bird cage (with two Diamond of Gould birds), burned grass, charcoal drawings on the floor-, Gyeonggi Creation Center, 2011.
Achieved Gesture # 1
Resin painting on rice paper, 145.5 x 81.5 cm, 2011.
“(…) Birds live a life on the border of human understanding as they freely wander, unbound to the law of gravity. That is why, when they don’t embody the human soul after the death of the body, they symbolise the bond between man and the world above. Birds are efficient and reliable messengers when it comes to accessing to the divine, the world of spirits or the land of the dead. Christine Laquet conceived her many-sided work at the end of her journey with the shaman. There will be a set of photographs related to the various experiments with the shaman and a video “Gunung,” “Achieved gesture #1”, a painting which is a resin on paper and an installation called “Vain Ceremony” made of black weeds proliferating on the ground and creeping up the walls and a dead tree from which a cage is hanging, containing two living birds, Diamonds of Gould, exchanging their warble.
(…) The painting, “Achieved gesture #1”, is also the first one of a series to come, focusing on universal gestures with a strong emotional and symbolic charge. It encloses the question raised by the held out hands, the priest’s or the politician’s imploring gesture, but also every man’s gesture when facing adversity.
What matters in the resin on paper painting is more the gesture than the portrait itself, a gesture figuring, in its very existence, the mere distance or the void between the two hands. The expression here comes from the hands. They are held out, open, welcoming, calling may be, they are not offering anything real, are not carrying anything and yet their message is that going toward someone or something is opening oneself to someone or something else, in full acceptance, be it a friend, an animal, a spirit or a god.”
Jean-Louis Poitevin text’s extracts from Message and Messengers in I SEE THE SEA AND THE SEA SEES ME – Christine Laquet, 2011.