Based On A True Story

The expression Based on a true story, which recalls pop and Hollywood culture as much as memories of the found object, forms the basis of the Galerie Derouillon’s summer show. On the cusp of words and space, and in a context of “alternative facts” and post-truth, the selected works invite the visitor on a joyous ramble between the disjointed blocks of our youth.

The paintings, sculptures and installations create islands of nostalgia and memory, and wrest visible traces of play, of fetish and totem from the secret of a faded past, what Michel Leiris would call a Metaphysics of Childhood. Thus, Simone Zaccagnini seats us at the breakfast-table of our early years, as though wakened from a fear we have tamed that looks down upon us, with humor, from Amandine Guruceaga’s great mask.

Faithful to a certain Californian art tradition, this exhibition is an invitation into a sensory and almost sensual experience, that sets off a shrinking feeling in the observer, as though they had tasted the wrong side of the mushroom in Alice in Wonderland. One is surrounded by objects are indeed disproportionate, enlarged; even the Fender Telecaster, the iconic rock guitar, scrutinizes us from its two meters fifty (Sadie Laska), and Claude Viallat’s imposing painting confirms and multiplies this entire psychedelic shade. Afterwards, one recovers in a colorful amble through building facades, Przemek Pyszczek’s children’s memories, continued in the singular furniture of Elvire Bonduelle.

Each work is a secret door that will open, in each of us, onto an irreducible memory. Nils Guadagnin draws us across the other side of the mirror. A mirror broken by the pedal of a bass drum, suspending the meaning of this exhibition on a ridge line. On one hand, art sketches out a truly magical territory where time can be travelled along both of its axes; on the other, art describes a great reversal of the show of appearances, a vital discipline in these times where we limp heavily along on crutches (Annabelle Arlie), straining to remain upright.

Based on a true story brings together eight artists (four women and four men): Annabelle Arlie, Elvire Bonduelle, Amandine Guruceaga, Nils Guadagnin, Sadie Laska, Przemek Pyszczek, Claude Viallat, Simone Zaccagnini.