Exhibitions From 28 September 2023 to 14 January 2024

We measure space with our bodies, projecting ourselves into it like an echo to better understand it and move around in it. These interactions can generate very physical emotions. For example, we can feel cramped and tense or serene. Space feeds our bodies emotionally, and our experiences are unique. Although it is most often dictated by our action verbs, the body does not use words for its own experiences, it lives them.

Claude Cattelain's site-specific works are as close as possible to these experiences, to this living world. Using plaster, mud, planks, beams, old doors and other carpentry residues, he creates tension-filled devices that materialise the very special physical resonance he has with the space. Like our bodies, the materials he uses (salvaged materials) have been through life, arriving with liabilities and antecedents linked to the gestures involved in handling them. His devices fall from the ceiling, lean against a concrete post, hold together two distinct planes, levitate in the centre of a room... Remove even the smallest element and the whole sculpture collapses. Claude Cattelain's work has the fragility and strength of our bodies in space: capable of much, they are ephemeral. The materials used fit together like a backbone. And like our skeleton, the elements are not glued together, they are held together by tension, by simple workshop gestures. Claude Cattelain's site-specific works are bodies constructed from his own experience.