JEUDIS, 250 x 150 x 50 cm, installation, oil on linen and canvas, collected, stolen and painted objects, varnish and spray on plaster
Solo show, Centre Culturel des Grottes, Geneva, CH, 2022 ©Farah Mirzayeva
A landscape does not have a story with a scenario & an ending.
What makes a landscape? Who makes it? And where is it located?
The one proposed by Sylvain Gelewski seems to extend beyond the window that contains it: on a green background, objects collected in the Grottes district stand alongside plaster moulded hands that were brought back from a previous installation. As a whole, the installation constitutes a fragmentary composition as well as an invitation to contemplate a set of objects. The latter, repainted and now monochrome, become standardised, thus cancelling out their material memory in favour of a landscape, whose green background calls for infinite transpositions.
The tension between the numerous paradoxes, visible through clues ranging from simple hints to full on provocation, creates a mirror image of the constantly changing and diverse neighborhood: the landscape in the window, illuminated from 10pm to midnight, becomes a portrait of the Grottes, a stage for it’s claims and demands.
Cassiane Pfund
Sylvain Gelewski 