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Pascal Convert

Born in 1957 in Mont-de-Marsan (FR)
Lives and works in Biarritz (FR)

Diaphanous apparitions, subtle evocations of objects and places gone for ever, past events, the works of Pascal Convert bring into play the process of memory and disappearance. Imprints of objects and spaces, drawings and installations offer a sensitive response to a society characterized by speed, information overload and forgetfulness. There is no nostalgia in his approach, but the will to reinvest time, to underline the ephemeral, through archival images or in the style of the archaeological investigation, in order to ‘construct a memory in the negative and incised.’¹ Indeed, ‘far from some positivist thought piling up evidence and testimony, [the artist] performs a subtraction of images’²: fragments of reportages that whiten until the image becomes illegible and loses its inform¬ative character in the video Direct/Indirect (1997); Basque villas of the 1930s due for demolition and the memory and remains of which survive through the extreme refinement of the drawings, cut-outs and casts produced by the artist (Reconstitution, 1991; Pièce rouge, 1996, etc.).

So many memento mori pieces highlight absence and reveal emptiness while paradoxically exhibiting the essence of things. This aesthetics of emptying and purging extends into the series of casts of the artist’s body (face, arm) – the Sculpture non attribuée (Unattributed sculpture), an imprint of a left leg, is the material trace of the body, stamped with the seal of time. While the technique (wax casting) and the material (silver-plated copper) refer to traditional sculpture, the way it is presented is radically different. The work is not erected, it sinks into the floor of the exhibition, revealing to the viewer only the gaping hole of the empty cast. (...) Didi Huberman

http://collection.fraclorraine.org/collection/print/125?lang=en