Galerie Laurent Godin presents Vincent Olinet
Une image, Vincent Olinet conceived an installation in which time passing and relation to space are a key question. He considered the relation between immersion into the artwork and its approach like a space in progress without constraints. Image is sculpture, sculpture is time and volume exists beyond what it offers to see.
On the gallery’s walls, a very colorful, baroque and exuberant wall paper, where flowers and bouquet seem to be in relief, where mouldings are only paintbrushes’ strokes… It appears like a sedimentation of several layer of images, a sort of trompe l’oeil with multiple levels. In the gallery, the walls become as many successive flat surfaces, as if one went through several screens. Going forward into the space, one penetrates the scenery, goes deeper in the image like approaching a sculpture by one side. Sculpture is in that extend unique since there’s always a hidden part. One can’t embrace it in its entirety by one look. In the same manner, the exhibition is built according to two point of view, the path back unveiling a new perspective.
On pedestals, one perceive soon the ephemeral nature of bowls of fruits and vases. Vases, glasses, carafes are not made of glass but out of ice and are indeed slowly melting before our eyes, soon leaving some fruits, wine stains…
Maintenant and 15h40, are two hours-long videos of melting compositions. They remind in an even more obvious way the Flemish masters’ still life from the XVIIth century and their will to seize time and death in their representations of vanitas.
Vincent Olinet
Vincent Olinet was born in 1981, the year of the left-wing arrival in french politics, the beginning of a new cycle, but also in a certain way the end of hope, of a possibility of change, a kind of collective desillusion, that seemed from that moment on to seize the epoch. This dull landscape frames doubtlessly Vincent Olinet’s creating context.
Since approximately 15 years, with obstination and humour, Vincent Olinet seems, in some kind of reaction to “lost illusions”, to be constantly searching to reinvent the world, to re-enchant it, in some kind of reaction to “lost illusions”.
Successively marine carpenter, baker, marble designer, jeweler, photographer, lumberjack, painter.. Vincent Olinet seizes willingly carftsman’s tools and materials, entertain himself in copying their gestures (without however obeying to technical, esthetical or functional obligations). He takes simple and universal forms over and, with diligence and ingenuity “re-makes”.
He creates marvelous, enchanting that turns out to be made of illusions, subterfuge and vain promises. A wonderful world of fairy tales created out of cardboard, artificial life of luxury ou « vie de château », melting down birthday cakes … Après moi le déluge, Pas encore mon Histoire, Je ne peux pas faire de miracles, Il était deux fois… as many meaningful artworks’ title that suggest some tales whose outcome is left to the public.
