A collaborative project by Claire Andrzejczak, Nadia Guerroui and Simon Asencio (clairenadiasimon), with the complicity of Frédéric de Goldschmidt.

Out of Character, April 2014, CAB Art Center, Brussels, Belgium

The night envelops everything in a sombre and deafening velvet. And the fear of the dark arises because it sends us back to our own contingence. The first look apprehends the entirety as if it is something nebulous. The parties are autonomous objects that produce a particular space-time when they discuss with each other. It is not a meaningful work of art but a researched work of art that emerges from this accumulation. It is an invitation to a controlled loss, to the wandering in space of a complex thought with several voices. It is a building that take the rise of collapsing into its own nothingness, preferring the poetic potential contained in the gap between its parts.

The individuals and information crash against each other and collide in Brownian motion. It is a collision without a meeting. Meetings without time to be lived are reduced to lightning moments during which the original, the evasive disappears behind its virtual ‘copy image’, without substance and disembodied. The triumphant urbanity is a formidable theatre where culture is diffused at the speed of light. In a globalising world, all is mobility and instability. The machines has won the race against the human and its algorithms are replacing the process of developing thought. The windows increase in number and new simulations open themselves up to us. Science fiction unveils the reality of a world in which our perceptive senses will be inhibited and our desires numbed. It is a reality in which the murmur of water from a river will not be audible to us, the beauty of a natural countryside will not move us and the universality of an artistic piece of art will not give us a buzz. The machine is an efficient and noisy piece of machinery, always pushing the biggest hopes further. Mankind is a complexe unity of senses, feelings and emotions intimately linked to an experience of time. Happiness is a fragile balance between taking and wasting time.

So quickly. Quickly and madly take and waste one’s time.

clairenadiasimon is not an artist-collective: It is the concoctive personality created by Claire Andrzejczak (b. 1985), Nadia Guerroui (b. 1988) and Simon Asencio (b. 1989) out of their creative dialogue and artistic output. Working not necessarily as a trio, but as three transferable duos, their practice is subject to relative flux and variation contingent upon the potential creative synergies at play. They present the results of their collaborative engagement, discarding intellectual proprietorship of their work; “Who made what” is a moot query in their practice, belying such ownership oriented separations between “group” and “solo” exhibitions.

clairenadiasimon’s work is born out of the specific situation in which it is displayed and viewed: The dialogue––whether in conflict or accord––that exists between the works; the resultant mood exuded from this exchange; and the cognitive effects on individual and collective viewership all determine how their work comes into being. The allusion to minimalist aesthetics and their use of prosaic materials such as paper, fabric, plastic, cement, or wood and simple technologies such as LEDs or holograms indicate an interest in the potential traces, however ephemeral, that crystalize in a viewer’s cognizance after immediate, short-lived perception of objects; the subtlety of the materials remains only a means to this end. This practice questions the viewer’s reliance on the sensory faculties to recognize extrinsic phenomena and their evocations and, instead, looks to what is lost in translation between raw preceptive experience and the calculated discernment after a stimulus is coded through the viewer’s heuristics. The mutuality of subject-object relations, the gaze, and how objects can alter––or be altered––under different ways of perceiving is at the crux of this investigation.

Particularly pertinent to this exhibition* is the way which clarenadiasimon questions the notion of individuation. To be “out of character” refers to an unambiguous loss of self-possession, rendering one indistinguishable from others or incongruous to one’s prescribed role. Integral to acting uncharacteristically is the role of a perceiver in determining what behavior befits or does not befit the individual under scrutiny. If perception is based on the reception of a viewer, so too does the notion of “character” remain contingent upon the prejudices of an extrinsic observer. Just as clairenadiasimon is a persona consisting of three individuals, so do the situations created by this persona consist of dissimilar objects that commune together by dint of a nearly imperceptible ethos. However, within these conditions set by clairenadiasimon, objects too can appear to take on roles beyond those previously assigned by an onlooker.

Julian Elias Bronner

Something happened today. Can we have some time, more than a month ? This is really just the beginning, I mean, we have fifty more years togheter and it's getting better and better, and this is the worst time we're in right now*, 2014
*extract from the movie “The Future” by Miranda July

(1)
Outside the box
Two strips of white curtains «Lunar spot» (flat dimensions: 930 x 365 cm).

(2)
Inside the box
Black pleated: Cotton velvet (flat dimensions: 4900 x 365 cm), black carpet (477 x 780 cm) and semi-gloss black tarpaulin (477 x 780 cm).

(3)
Hal’s Eye
Led, processor, 3D printing, glass (35 x 35 x 0.6 cm) and black paint.
The LED varies in intensity according to the rhythm of a human breathing. Reference to the film «2001: A Space Odyssey», by Stanley Kubrick.

(4)
Roses
Roses, transparent plastic, projector PAR 20 and led bulb.
Faded and fresh flowers vaccumed.
Inspired by the tale of «the Beauty and the Beast».

(5)
Hologram
Plexiglass pyramid (128.4 x 128.4 x 87 cm), 4 lcd screens, 4 DVD players, 4 Videos (5 min 07 each, loops), MDF dark grey colored and steel. (130 x 130 x 130 cm).
3D modeling of a fictional helmet from fragments of different models (racing helmet, helmet of armor, augmented reality helmet, audio helmet, massage helmet ...). «Turntable» animation video : a slow rotation on a vertical axis.

(6)
Volcano
Foam board, toasting, modeling clay, glue, basalt powder from Iceland, carborundum, 2 two LEDs, MDF dark-grey colored and steel. (113 x 113 x 113 cm).
A maquette of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, to 1/26000 reach system, illuminated alternately.

(7)
Radiogram
Baryta paper (40 x 50 cm), projector PAR 20, led bulb, MDF dark grey colored and steel (70 x 90 x 50 cm).
Mailing from a mineral collector who reproduced the experience of Becquerel: deposit of 3 radioactive rocks on an envelope. Photographic development in laboratory of radioactivity stains.

(8)
Little Pebbles
Clay, Glass (35 x 35 x 0.6 cm), black paint, projector PAR 20, led bulb, MDF dark grey colored and steel. (70 x 90 x 50 cm).
A stacking of clay debris collected on the walls of a cave (Algeria).

(9)
Aquarium
Glass aquarium (80 x 40 x 40 cm), goldfish, water, bacteria, pump, volcanic rocks and digital photo frame. Video : 5 min 00, loop.
Mortimer, sits alongside a screen background.

(10)
Subliminal Images
Tv (50 x 50 x 40 cm), DVD-player, video 13 min 00, loop and MDF dark grey colored. (50 x 50 x 15 cm).
Two ricochets attempted photographs on a frozen lake, appear as a flash in a dark video. The intervals of these flashes follow the Fibonacci sequence (1 + 1, 2 + 1, 3 + 2 etc...). Soft Noise.

(11)
Black Hole
Polystyrene, polyurethane foam and black mat paint (370 x 180 x 55 cm).
Mass suspended to 350 cm.