plastic radiations
La vie est courte. L'une des raisons de l'existence du 'portrait' est le désire de perpétuer la mémoire d'une personne et de créer une image figée dans le temps du portraitisé. Mais qu'arrive-t-il si le sujet n'est pas un individu, mais un mannequin de plastic supposé mettre plus de 500 ans à disparaitre ? Qui vivra le plus longtemps ? Le mannequin en plastique ou son portrait Plastic Radiations ? 2011
Human life is fleeting. The function of a portrait is in part to prolong life, to substantiate the life of its subject and to perpetuate their memory. Portraits convey humanity, but also beauty and power. Mannequins serve a congruent function. In store front windows, and the aisles of consumerism, clothed mannequins gaze past us indifferently, while selling us images of what we might look like, what life might look like. Stripped bare, mannequins, in their smooth surfaces, curves and poses, reflect back to us distilled notions of beauty and power. The white neon lights of the department store - cold, impersonal, and offensively artificial - cast a different light when thrown into relief with the bodies they usually illuminate from above. Dan Flavin used these sticks of illuminated and inert gas to show us something about light itself and the way we see. Bousserez uses them to dissect and irradiate these plastic vessels of superficial desire, and opens the way for a different beauty, born, for example, of the random play of light on a plastic surface. He creates the visual space for a meditation on depth and superficiality, on beauty, on memory, and on life and death. 2011
