![\"cata1998\"](\"http:\/\/ninachildress.com\/nc\/wp-content\/uploads\/cata1998-e1439981237893.jpg\")
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\u2026j\u2019en avais vu bien d\u2019autres, j\u2019avais visit\u00e9 le monde des choses qui auraient pu \u00eatre, et je n\u2019arrivais pas \u00e0 me les sortir de l\u2019esprit. Et j\u2019avais connu la beaut\u00e9 prisonni\u00e8re au c\u0153ur de ce monde, la beaut\u00e9 perdue pour moi et pour nous tous, et j\u2019en \u00e9tais tomb\u00e9 amoureux.<\/em><\/p>\n
Italo Calvino, Temps Z\u00e9ro<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Au tournant du mill\u00e9naire, comment les occidentaux, et particuli\u00e8rement ceux de la jeune g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, vivent, agissent et r\u00e9agissent \u00e0 leur temps, \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e8re de la standardisation omnipr\u00e9sente et du capitalisme omnipotent\u00a0? Si beaucoup peuvent sans doute \u00eatre class\u00e9s dans ce que Douglas Coupland nomme G\u00e9n\u00e9ration X\u00a0[1]<\/a>, ne voyant aucun futur dans le futur, \u00e9coulant le temps dans un univers calfeutr\u00e9 \u00ab\u00a0microsoft\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb, consommant \u00ab nourriture insipide\u00a0\u00bb et jeux vid\u00e9o \u00ab\u00a0ennuyeusement excitants\u00a0\u00bb, certains, heureusement, s\u2019efforcent de r\u00e9sister \u00e0 ce non-futur-comme-futur en repensant ou r\u00e9-imaginant les relations entre les humains et le monde, entre le corps et l\u2019esprit, entre le public et le priv\u00e9, entre la joie et l\u2019anxi\u00e9t\u00e9\u2026<\/p>\n
Dans le domaine de l\u2019art contemporain, l\u2019une des strat\u00e9gies de d\u00e9fiance les plus courantes consiste alors \u00e0 d\u00e9velopper des discours et imageries critiques permettant de transgresser politiquement et culturellement l\u2019ordre dominant. En m\u00eame temps, d\u2019autres travaillent plus \u2018discr\u00e8tement\u2019 \u00e0 inventer de nouvelles mani\u00e8res de regarder le monde et \u00e0 rafra\u00eechir le rapport existant entre le corps et l\u2019espace afin de nous rappeler que les potentiels de changements, d\u2019incidents et donc de libert\u00e9 demeurent, que l\u2019id\u00e9al est toujours quelque chose de possible \u00e0 convoiter.<\/p>\n
Nina Childress compte parmi ces artistes qui aujourd\u2019hui aspirent d\u2019un c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00e0 un \u00e9tat d\u2019\u00eatre id\u00e9al, et de l\u2019autre, sont capables de r\u00e9v\u00e9ler l\u2019insondable et le fascinant de notre quotidien devenu semble-t-il sans espoir. Depuis une dizaine d\u2019ann\u00e9es, elle peint pour l\u2019essentiel des objets quotidiens et banals, dont la plupart semblent resurgir tout droit de sa petite enfance. Ce qui vient \u00e0 l\u2019esprit en consid\u00e9rant son travail, c\u2019est alors l\u2019immanence d\u2019une obsession, une obsession m\u00eal\u00e9e de fantaisies, de beaut\u00e9s et de r\u00eaves. Cette obsession r\u00e9side d\u2019abord dans ce que l\u2019artiste accorde au processus r\u00e9tinien de perception\/r\u00e9ception du visuel, mais il s\u2019agit aussi de l\u2019obsession incarn\u00e9e dans la constance du d\u00e9veloppement s\u00e9riel des \u2018motifs\u2019 qu\u2019elle explore et repr\u00e9sente.<\/p>\n
Choisis \u00ab\u00a0avant tout pour leur forme et leur texture\u00a0\u00bb, ces \u2018motifs\u2019 sont de plus agrandis \u00e0 une \u00e9chelle souvent monumentale. Ainsi les s\u00e9ries des \u201cTupperwares\u201d<\/em>, 1990 (o\u00f9 la bo\u00eete en plastique transparent \u00e9tudi\u00e9e selon diff\u00e9rentes perspectives devient objet abstrait), des \u201cBonbons\u201d<\/em> 1991 (dont les proportions d\u00e9mesur\u00e9es g\u00e9n\u00e8rent in\u00e9vitablement une interpr\u00e9tation perceptuelle ambigu\u00eb de ce qui n\u2019est \u00e0 l\u2019origine qu\u2019un simple petit rouleau de r\u00e9glisse, un \u2018nounours\u2019, une sucette…), des \u201cSavons\u201d<\/em> 1992-1993 (devenus \u2018objets\u2019 par la d\u00e9coupe de leurs contours), des \u201cJouets\u201d<\/em> 1994-1996 (non seulement d\u00e9form\u00e9s dans l\u2019\u00e9chelle et les proportions, mais aussi rendus inconventionnels par les juxtapositions dialectiques qui s\u2019y sont op\u00e9r\u00e9es), auxquelles il faut rajouter depuis peu la s\u00e9rie des \u2018\u2019Hair Pieces\u2019\u2019 <\/em>(chevelures provenant de magazines glamours et devenues motifs \u00e0 exploiter), et les \u2018\u2019Easy Looking\u2019\u2019<\/em> et \u2018\u2019Soft Edge\u2019\u2019<\/em> (peintures abstraites destin\u00e9es \u00e0 servir de contrepoints aux autres et dont la variation se fait sur des ovales flous), ont ensemble cr\u00e9\u00e9 des centaines de sc\u00e9narios qu\u2019on pourrait qualifier de sublimatoires<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Nina Childress semble en effet assigner \u00e0 ces objets ou substances une sorte de fascination f\u00e9tichiste, invitant le regardeur \u00e0 une approche sensorielle du travail, plus qu\u2019\u00e0 une v\u00e9ritable recherche de sens\u00a0:<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Ce que ces objets v\u00e9hiculent comme r\u00e9f\u00e9rents psychologiques ne me touche qu\u2019inconsciemment. Or, c\u2019est de cela que me parlent habituellement les gens. Les probl\u00e8mes que je me pose sont pourtant d\u2019ordre plus formel\u2026 Avant de peindre, j\u2019essaie toujours de me projeter dans une relation sensible avec l\u2019objet, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire, telle une lilliputienne, de me mettre \u00e0 son \u00e9chelle afin de mieux en appr\u00e9hender la substance.\u00bb[2]<\/a><\/p>\n
En fait, le d\u00e9sir que manifeste ici l\u2019artiste soul\u00e8ve la question essentielle du rapport \u2018standardis\u00e9\u2019 entre le corps et l\u2019environnement quotidien, autrement dit entre le corps et les objets marqu\u00e9s du sceau d\u2019une culture qui en a d\u00e9fini l\u2019utilit\u00e9, l\u2019\u00e9chelle et la forme.<\/p>\n
Dans ce sens, l\u2019\u0153uvre de Nina Childress offre une occasion des plus int\u00e9ressantes pour bousculer les insuffisances de notre perception du r\u00e9el et du monde. La perception des b\u00e9b\u00e9s<\/em> (Espace Saintonge, Paris, 1994) incarne parfaitement cette id\u00e9e. Dans cette installation (unique), elle a reconstitu\u00e9 physiquement l\u2019univers familier d\u2019un b\u00e9b\u00e9 en reproduisant \u00e0 \u00e9chelle amplifi\u00e9e mobiles, livres, v\u00eatements, bac \u00e0 sable, m\u00e9gots, cailloux, etc. Cet environnement redimensionn\u00e9 \u2018grandeur adulte\u2019 agissait alors directement sur nos sens, tant visuels que tactiles, qui s\u2019en trouvaient ipso facto<\/em> brusquement d\u00e9stabilis\u00e9s. De fa\u00e7on similaire, dans la s\u00e9rie des peintures de \u2018\u2019Jouets\u2019\u2019<\/em> qui fait suite et que l\u2019on peut consid\u00e9rer comme une extension de cette exp\u00e9rience, elle oblige l\u2019\u0153il du public \u00e0 (re)plonger dans le monde fantastique et refoul\u00e9 des Barbies, des Schtroumpfs, des Girafes Vulli, des figurines de Kinder Surprise\u2026<\/p>\n
Bien s\u00fbr, d\u2019autres artistes contemporains se sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 employ\u00e9s \u00e0 faire resurgir des objets de l\u2019enfance avec parfois cette m\u00eame d\u00e9mesure dans l\u2019\u00e9chelle et les proportions, mais c\u2019\u00e9tait le plus souvent accompagn\u00e9 d\u2019une touche de spectral (comme dans les petits camions ou les gros rats de Katarina Fritsch), de path\u00e9tique (utilisation des jouets par Mike Kelley), de m\u00e9lancolique (animaux morts habill\u00e9s de gilets tricot\u00e9s d\u2019Annette Messager) ou encore de monstrueux (le lit d\u2019enfant qui devient une cage psychotique chez Robert Gober).<\/p>\n
Chez Nina Childress rien de tel. Et s\u2019il fallait pr\u00e9tendre \u00e0 quelques comparaisons, je dirais que son \u0153uvre se place plut\u00f4t du c\u00f4t\u00e9 des mannequins et camion de pompier \u2018g\u00e9antis\u00e9s\u2019 de Charles Ray ou encore des photographies de Laurie Simmons. Il est clair qu\u2019il existe quelque chose d\u2019ironique dans cet art, mais celui-ci nous am\u00e8ne \u00e0 d\u00e9couvrir un univers \u00e9tonnamment rafra\u00eechissant, traduisant un aspect surprenant de notre vie, sans doute trop vite oubli\u00e9, et dans lequel nous pouvons encore s\u00fbrement trouver une chance de respirer l\u2019air frais qui manque \u00e0 notre quotidien devenu \u2019insipide\u2019.<\/p>\n
Une autre caract\u00e9ristique du travail de Nina Childress r\u00e9side dans l\u2019implication d\u2019anomalies intrins\u00e8ques \u00e0 sa peinture, que le spectateur remarquera ou non du premier coup, ou ne percevra peut-\u00eatre jamais\u00a0:<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Ce que je cherche \u00e0 faire\u00a0: attirer le regard par de belles formes, de belles couleurs, un fini impeccable, puis \u2018perturber\u2019 discr\u00e8tement le r\u00e9sultat par un d\u00e9tail stupide comme un mauvais cadrage, ou un vide d\u00e9sesp\u00e9rant.\u00a0\u00bb[3]<\/a><\/p>\n
Cette attitude t\u00e9moigne finalement d\u2019un glissement du centre d\u2019int\u00e9r\u00eat esth\u00e9tique, d\u2019une volont\u00e9 d\u2019\u00e9chapper aux normes, de les \u2018pervertir\u2019 quelque peu, m\u00eame si ces \u2018anomalies\u2019 n\u2019ont pas de raison d\u2019\u00eatre \u00e9vidente. Ses tableaux rel\u00e8vent d\u2019ailleurs plus de la technique du collage que d\u2019une \u2018n\u00e9cessit\u00e9\u2019 logique de l\u2019histoire de l\u2019art que beaucoup veulent mettre en avant afin de justifier le retour \u00e0 la peinture. D\u2019une fa\u00e7on g\u00e9n\u00e9rale en effet, les motifs qu\u2019elle peint sont d\u00e9tach\u00e9s d\u2019un fond, autrement dit d\u2019un contexte ou d\u2019un environnement, ouvrant \u00e0 un univers \u2018d\u00e9cal\u00e9\u2019 dans le sens o\u00f9 il se produit un \u00e9cart entre la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 et la mani\u00e8re dont elle est restitu\u00e9e. C\u2019est un univers \u2018post-freudien\u2019 o\u00f9 la fantaisie et la beaut\u00e9 ne peuvent \u00eatre ais\u00e9ment extrapol\u00e9es de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 et o\u00f9 l\u2019\u00e9l\u00e9ment n\u2019est pas n\u00e9cessairement reli\u00e9 \u00e0 un tout.<\/p>\n
Si cet aspect semblait d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9vident dans la s\u00e9rie des \u201cJouets\u201d<\/em>, il se radicalise avec les \u201cHair Pieces\u201d<\/em>, peintures dans lesquelles le corps n\u2019est pr\u00e9sent qu\u2019implicitement, comme la trace inattribu\u00e9e d\u2019une identit\u00e9 anonyme ou absente, qui peut \u00eatre celle de l\u2019artiste ou du regardeur lui-m\u00eame. Ce qui est certain, c\u2019est que le sujet, si sujet il y a dans ce processus de \u2018f\u00e9tichisation\u2019, est devenu espace vide, une sorte de vacuum. <\/em>En fait, il rappelle l\u00e0 encore l\u2019id\u00e9ale perversion de la beaut\u00e9 red\u00e9finie en termes de sublime.<\/p>\n
C\u2019est dans cette tension entre la beaut\u00e9 \u2018sublim\u00e9e\u2019 et la mise \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9cart des rep\u00e8res d\u2019espace, mais aussi de temps (\u201cParce que je le vaux bien\u201d, <\/em>montage vid\u00e9o, 1998) que Nina Childress ouvre une br\u00e8che dans nos consciences : finalement son monde est bien le n\u00f4tre, un monde assujetti au pouvoir de l\u2019image, autrement dit, un \u00ab\u00a0monde iconique\u00a0\u00bb (comme le formule Christoph Wulf[4]<\/a>), dans lequel nous avons perdu toute relation directe avec le r\u00e9el pour devenir, non plus des participants, mais des observateurs.<\/p>\n
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Evelyne Jouanno<\/p>\n
Paris, le 2 novembre 1998<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Voir Douglas Coupland\u00a0: Generation X<\/em>, Tales for an Accelerated Culture, St Martin\u2019s Press, US, 1991.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Interview avec l\u2019artiste, 03 juin 1998.<\/p>\n
[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n
[4]<\/a> Voir Edgar Morin\/Christoph Wulf\u00a0: Plan\u00e8te\u00a0: l\u2019aventure inconnue<\/em>, Editions Mille et une nuits\/Arte Editions, n\u00b0 157, avril 1997.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
A Fetishist Sublimation<\/h4>\n
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I had seen much more than that, I had visited the world of the things that could have been, and I couldn\u2019t drive it from my mind. And I had known the beauty kept prisoner in the heart of that world, the beauty lost for me and for all of us, and I had fallen in love with it.<\/em><\/p>\n
Italo Calvino, t zero<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At the turn of the Millennium, how do Western people, and in particular the younger generation, live, act and react to their time, the age of the omnipresent standardisation as well as the omnipotent\u00a0late-Capitalism ? If many of them can undoubtedly be classified as what Douglas Coupland calls Generation X\u00a0[1]<\/a>, who see no future in the future and pass their time in an enclosed \u201cmicrosofted\u201d universe, consuming \u201cinsipid food\u201d and \u201ctiresomely exciting\u201d video games, others, fortunately, strive to resist to such a no-future-as-the-future in rethinking or re-imaging the relations between humans and the world, between the body and the mind, between the public and the private, between joy and anxiety\u2026<\/p>\n
In the contemporary art circles, one of the most common strategies of defiance consists in developing critical discourses and imageries to challenge the dominant political and cultural order. At the same time, some artists work more \u2018discreetly\u2019 to discover new ways of looking at the world, refreshing the relation between body and space in order to remind us that the potentials of the change, the incidents and hence the liberty remain, that the ideal is still something it is possible to covet.<\/p>\n
Nina Childress is among those artists who, on the one hand, aspire to an ideal state of being, and on the other hand, are able to reveal the unfathomable and the fascinating in our seemingly hopeless everyday life. For the last ten years, she has been painting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 what are essentially banal, everyday objects, most of which seem directly derived from her own childhood.<\/p>\n
What comes to mind when one considers her work, is the immanence of an obsession, an obsession mingled with fancies, beauties and memories. Such an obsession resides first in what the artist grants to the retinal process of perception\/reception of the visual, but the obsession is also embodied in the constancy of the serial development of the \u2018motifs\u2019 she explores and represents. Chosen \u201cprimarily for their shape and their texture\u201d, these \u2018motifs\u2019 are moreover enlarged, often to a monumental scale. Thus, the series of the \u201cTupperware\u2019s\u201d<\/em>, 1990 (where the transparent plastic box explored from different perspectives becomes an abstract objet), the \u201cCandies\u201d<\/em> 1991 (in which the exaggerated proportions inevitably generate an ambiguous perceptual interpretation of what was, at the origin, only a simple little licorice roll, a bear-shape candy, a lollipop…), the \u201cSoaps\u201d<\/em> 1992-1993 (which became \u2018objects\u2019 by the carved contours), the \u201cToys\u201d<\/em> 1994-1996 (not only deformed in scale and proportions, but also made unconventional by the dialectical tensions produced by their juxtapositions), to which we must add the recent \u2018\u2019Hair Pieces\u2019\u2019 <\/em>series (heads of hair taken from beauty magazines and perceived as \u2018motifs\u2019 to exploit), and the \u2018\u2019Easy Looking\u2019\u2019<\/em> and \u2018\u2019Soft Edge\u2019\u2019<\/em> series (abstract paintings intended to be used as counterpoints to the others and which explore variations on light and soft ovals), together have created hundreds of scenarios that we could qualify as sublimatorials.<\/em><\/p>\n
Nina Childress seems indeed to assign to these objets or substances a kind of fetishist fascination, inviting the observer more to a sensory approach to the work than to a search for meaning :<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0What these objets convey as psychological referents touches me only unconsciously. Yet this is usually the aspect of my work that people want to discuss with me. The problems I\u2019m thinking about, however, are more focused on the form. Before starting to paint, I always try to project myself into a sensory relationship with the object, that is, like a Lilliputian, to reduce myself to its scale the better to apprehend its substance.\u00bb[2]<\/a><\/p>\n
Here, the desire manifested by the artist raises the essential issue of the \u2018standardised\u2019 rapport between body and everyday environment, or, in other words, between body and objects marked by the seal of a culture that has defined their usefulness, their scale and their form.<\/p>\n
In this light, the work of Nina Childress offers us an interesting opportunity of jostling the insufficiencies of our perceptions of the real and the world. \u201cLa perception des b\u00e9b\u00e9s\u201d<\/em> (\u201cbabies\u2019 perception\u201d) (Espace Saintonge, Paris, 1994) embodies perfectly this idea. In this installation (unique), she has reconstituted physically the familiar universe of a baby, reproducing in on amplified scale the mobiles, books, clothes, sand area, butts of cigarettes, pebbles, etc. This \u2018adult size\u2019 redimensioned environment acted directly on our both visual and tactile senses, which suddenly found themselves totally disturbed. Similarly, in the following \u201cToys\u201d<\/em> series paintings, which we can consider as an extension of this experience, she obliges the public\u2019s eye to (re)immerse itself in the fantastic and forgotten world of Barbies, Smurfs, Vulli Giraffes, Kinder Surprise\u2026<\/p>\n
Of course, other contemporary artists had already used childhood objects that return from the past with the same excess in scale and proportions, but most of the time, it was with a touch of the eerie (as in the little trucks or massive rats of Katarina Fritsch), the pathetic (as the use of toys by Mike Kelley), the melancholic (as the dead animals with knitted coats by Annette Messager), or the monstrous (as in the baby bed become a psychotic cage by Robert Gober). In Nina Childress\u2019 work, there is nothing of that. And if one should have to search for some comparisons, I would say that her work is closer to Charles Rays\u2019 \u2018giantised\u2019 mannequins and fire truck as well as the photographs of Laurie Simmons. It is clear that something ironical exists in this art, but it also induces us to discover an unexpected refreshing universe, reflecting a surprising and incredible aspect of our life, undoubtedly forgotten too quickly, and in which we are certainly still able to breathe the fresh air that our \u2018insipid\u2019 everyday life is missing.<\/p>\n
Another characteristic of Nina Childress\u2019 work resides in the implied anomalies in her paintings which the viewer may or may not notice, or which he or she may never even perceive:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m looking for is to attract the viewer with beautiful shapes, beautiful colours, an impeccable finish, and then discreetly \u2018disturb\u2019 the result with a stupid detail as a bad centering or a despairing emptiness.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n
This attitude ultimately reveals a shift in the aesthetic centre of interests, a wish to escape from the norms, to \u2018pervert\u2019 them a little, even if these \u2018anomalies\u2019 have no apparent reason. However, her pictures derive more from collage techniques than from a logical \u2018necessity\u2019 of Art History that many want to push forward in order to justify a return to painting. In fact, the motifs she paints are generally detached from a background, that is, from a context or an environment, opening to a \u2018slipped\u2019 universe in the sense that it produces a deviation between reality and the way it is depicted. This is a \u2018post-Freudian\u2019 universe where fantasy and beauty can\u2019t be extrapolated easily from reality, and where each element is not necessarily linked to a whole.<\/p>\n
If this aspect already seemed evident in the \u201cToys\u201d<\/em> series, it becomes more radical with the \u201cHair Pieces\u201d<\/em>, paintings in which the body is present only implicitly, as an unattributed trace of an anonymous or absent identity, which can be that of the artist or of the viewer himself. What is sure is that the subject, if subject there is in this process of \u2018fetishisation\u2019, has become an empty space, a kind of vacuum<\/em>. In fact, it reminders us again the ideal perversion of beauty redefined in terms of the sublime.<\/p>\n
It is in this tension between \u2018sublimated\u2019 beauty and the dislocation of spacial and also temporal references (\u201cParce que je le vaux bien\u201d<\/em>, video<\/em>, 1998), that Nina Childress opens a breach in our consciousness : in the end, her world is rightly ours, a world subjugated by the power of images, or more precisely an \u201ciconical world\u201d as formulated by Christoph Wulf[4]<\/a>, in which we have lost all direct relation to the real to become no longer participants but observers.<\/p>\n
Evelyne Jouanno<\/p>\n
Paris, 2 November 1998<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> See Douglas Coupland\u00a0: Generation X<\/em>, Tales for an Accelerated Culture, St Martin\u2019s Press, US, 1991.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Interview with the artist, 03 June 1998.<\/p>\n
[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n
[4]<\/a> See Edgar Morin\/Christoph Wulf\u00a0: Plan\u00e8te\u00a0: l\u2019aventure inconnue<\/em>, Editions Mille et une nuits\/Arte Editions, n\u00b0 157, April 1997.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2026j\u2019en avais vu bien d\u2019autres, j\u2019avais visit\u00e9 le monde des choses qui auraient pu \u00eatre, et je n\u2019arrivais pas \u00e0 me les sortir de l\u2019esprit. Et j\u2019avais connu la beaut\u00e9 prisonni\u00e8re au c\u0153ur de ce monde, la beaut\u00e9 perdue pour moi et pour nous tous, et j\u2019en \u00e9tais tomb\u00e9 amoureux. Italo Calvino, Temps Z\u00e9ro… +<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n