Victor Vaysse
we, now, you ! la galerie / la galerie - Installation - 2017
presented as part of the exhibition panorama 19
As in a museum, there are sculptures, images,
set up in a space.
The sculptures have a familiar look,
but they are devoid of depth, they are images.
Cut round, the forms of the sculptures turn
as you go past.
The forms, the ground, everything is bright and shiny.
You feel you are exerting a power over
the space surrounding you.
You are, almost, the main centre of attention.
Here everything acts a sign.
This installation takes as its starting point a
computer graphics technique known as a sprite,
an image on a transparent ground forming part
of a 3D scene. The use of sprites began in arcade
games in 1974. Sprites are active components in a
still backdrop. For example, plants in video games
were long produced using composite imagery.
These images pivot as the players make their way
through the game so as to face them. In a space lit
by fluorescent tubes, images of cropped subjects
stand on plinths, like sculptures. With contours
reminiscent of a photographed subject, these
images act like sprites in a video game and follow
the viewer’s trajectory. It is therefore impossible
to walk around the object, thereby blurring the
relationship between viewer, object and exhibition
space. Used to looking at works in a museum
in any way they like, viewers are destabilised:
by adapting to their presence, the installation
environment limits their viewpoint.
Two lines of thought are thus addressed in the
piece: on the one hand, it explores the capacity
of photographic images to suggest volume; and,
on the other, it questions viewer interaction with
the space through which he moves.
