Amaurote

This conversation with Gaia Bobò took place for the opening of A maurot e, Quentin Lefranc’s second solo show at the Gilla Loercher gallery.

Gaia Bobò : I would like to begin by asking you to expand on your critical enquiry on the motif of the plinth. Had you previously worked on this theme, or is this a new experiment? This subject strongly resonates with your aesthetic and architectural investigations: plinths are an extremely common trope in the grammar of exhibitions, to the extent that they end up being overlooked. But as Piero Manzoni proved with B ase of t h e W orl d (1961), one artistic gesture or one intuition can open up new meanings.

Quentin Lefranc : Overlooked, yes and no, the traditional white block we can find in museums is often quite depressing and an easy copout. Some artists have devoted obsessive and impressive attention to it, such as Constantin Brâncusi and Didier Vermeiren, or the minimalist movement, which discarded it entirely. In my own artistic reflections, the plinth is quite rare. When it appears, I play with its conventional meanings. In their primary function, plinths tend to be opaque and isolating, and they run counter to my concerns. However, once placed into an architecture, they shift into a sculptural element, playful devices to look at the space differently. I am thinking of Opus (2019), a box-like base with cut-out openings which frame the sculpture inside. Macguffin (2020) too is a wooden structure which stretches from the floor to the ceiling, inside of which hangs a base which is both unusable and inaccessible. I can also add Sur un piédestal (2023), a work of process art composed by a pyramid of used plinths. In each of these creations, I try to make the works go beyond the boundaries of a base. Plinths become a display to consider the space around them, to question how we address it, and a pretext to flip the situation over and play with what is present. Manzoni’s body of work is a wonderful example of this. With one gesture, he overturns the base, he makes it redundant and carries the history of sculpture into the poetics of the world.

GB : The reversal of the architectural function of plinths seems crucial here. In the different works you mentioned, as well as in the ones exhibited, the function of the object is cancelled or questioned by its displacement. One might speak of a centrality of the “gesture” as a tool for opening up utopian perspectives that simultaneously activate both spatial and temporal dimensions. In spatial terms, your manipulation—and thus the artistic gesture — disorients the form/function by destroying certain fundamental coordinates, like the contact with the ground or the perpendicularity. In temporal terms, your photographic work which concludes the show displays a square block made of stone gradually taken over by nature, which shifts our focus to the arbitrary nature of geometric shapes, and to the erosion of their predetermined boundaries: by wearing away any sharp edges, natural forces open up new formal possibilities, freeing the base from the constraints imposed by its morphological specificity. In this way, as the six planes of the parallelepiped gradually go beyond their defined limits, new positions transform the possibilities of its shape. Finally, these two processes do not seem to me to be disconnected from each other.

QL : You mention two aspects which feel essential to me. My reflection was initially linked to space. I enjoyed considering how something can function within a place, the path it can carve, and the meaning of its location. Then I realized that I could not touch upon this complex idea without discussing time, which is connected to our existence. These two concepts work in a continuous to-and-fro. Time enables space to open up, and space allows
time to escape. In this interval, we can live, be within the experience— with endless room to explore, where things can be taken in one way and then another. Utopia is the possibility to invent something new, to break down the frame, to imagine liberation. For this exhibition, I unfolded a geometrical object, a plinth, and imagined various possibilities that go beyond its original nature to examine what it allows or inhibits, how it functions, and with a certain lightness of touch, consider its historical and spatial structures. The same shape, based on the golden ratio, can be found throughout the show: 10,5 x 10,5 x 16,5 inches. It can be found throughout the installation, with the picture of the abandoned quarry suspended from the ceiling, tethered to the place where it is exhibited, or handled by a child, connected to other shapes, handled in the studio. But one thing remains certain: time is always confronted with space. I work on this question in several different ways and with different gears, through the display of the object in space, but also through my work on archives, my experimentations, and new settings.

GB : As you mention “other spaces”, it brings to mind the importance of scale in your work, which is closely connected to temporality and consequently to utopia. In the physical models you make, two spatial and temporal dimensions or scales operate together. They constantly travel between a potential past and a blurry future. The experience of the present moment, at any rate, is inevitably linked to the sensorial exploration of space, as well as to the critical interpretation of its constraints.

QL : In my studio, several models are arranged on shelves.. Some are done, others were completed on a larger scale. Others need more work. Modeling is an essential part of my work and I always imagine it as a projection of reality. I started working with physical models very early on in my career. As a young graduate, I didn’t have a studio to experiment with my ideas, and I needed to imagine my work spatially. So I started playing around with little constructions in utopian spaces, miniature white cubes made out of cardboard, chopsticks, glass panels and not much else beside. To this day I still use small-scale models to work on my installations and shows. It makes me go faster and see better how different elements work together. When I want to correct something, I just need to slash at it with a box cutter, and then I can look at what changes. Small-scale models allow me to materialize my ideas and to understand how they will be anchored into space. They are both a consequence and the object of my research. They represent a certain form of reality.

GB : Could we then say that models are a laboratory for the work ? We could see them as a protected dimension which prefigures the creation of the work itself, and this takes me back to the analogy with of childhood and play being the laboratory for life.

QL : If by “laboratory” you mean a place for research and experimentation, then the word is apt indeed. It is a space where my self-imposed laws are the rule, so I may check on specific set-ups or test hypothetical situations. To use the metaphor of board games: I deploy a previously dreamed-up strategy, the material creation of an idea, with its vicissitudes and above all, what I have not been able to anticipate. Like during a boardgame, a physical model can help reality surprise us, make us lose our initial projections, our desire to control the unexpected, while still yielding enough place to express itself. These small laboratories are to me spaces of full awareness: they force me to pinpoint my intentions, to refine my gestures, to measure each of my decisions. They are both critical and introspective grounds, where I get rid of the superfluous to get closer still to the essence of ideas.

GB : I can also read through the lines of your work the strength of an ironic dimension, through what we mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, the loss of functionality. Could we say that the more a form escapes its function, the more it becomes absurd? How do you relate to this absurdity within the context of such a rigorous artistic practice as yours?

QL: Absurdity and discipline are not antithetical. When you own and master a level of absurdity, it starts to make sense. These heavy white blocks, in their cumbersome familiarity, become, in my physical models, small modular pieces that can be easily moved around. The show space is in the continuity of the space where the model is placed, and irony becomes a
statement. It allows me to go beyond the purely formal and geometric side of things, which often bores me. The utopia of plinths is displayed within the space where they are staged and in life.

GB : You already mentioned your intention to move away from geometric purity. I was interested when you once told me that you were more influenced by Arte Povera than by minimalism. This makes me wonder about your relationship to materiality and to its transformation, in other words, to its energetic dimension.

QL : Today, I feel more drawn towards a form of apparent simplicity that reveals complex or even ineffable meanings, rather than by closed shapes. The origins of minimalism, even if I do not want to take too broad a view, can be found in a desire to define everything. By the way, some artists like Robert Morris and Dan Graham understood this quickly went against the grain by using curved shapes and infinite reflections. Their work takes materiality into account, play with it, and reveals its possibilities. This creates a much more open connection to the work, while still keeping their intentions precise and disciplined, achieving what I would call a “restrained action”. In that way, I relate them to some Italian artists such as Giovanni Anselmo. I am partial to the way that artistic generation gave materiality a voice of its own. For this show, I paid particularly attention to the materiality of shapes. In reality, each module is made from old plinths I got from a museum, that were all bound for the landfill after an exhibition. This way of reusing objects is not only an environmental statement, I have reused and changed them without painting them. I chose to keep the marks of time, the way they were made and how they were used, accepting their flaws and their imperfections. I wanted the contrast between them and the utopian white of the gallery, to let go of the notion of shape and consider them beyond the duration of the show. I am not only placing them between the ground and the ceiling, but also within a temporal interval.

GB : This “historicity of matter” which you have just mentioned, allows me to discuss another aspect of this question: the open definition of the word “surface”. These marks seem to highlight a sequence of minimal histories, anonymous and involuntary signs that the surface records like a seismograph. In this alternative “energetic” activation, this“epidermis” becomes the site where the passage of bodies that have come close is recorded, retaining it within itself. We can see the surface as the layer that is the most extreme, the most sensitive but also the most exposed to environmental and temporal variations, by observing a double movement: the transformation within the matter itself –does stability mean inertia? – and the influence of external agents.

QL : When I contemplate ancient sculptures, most notably those in stone or marble, I particularly enjoy noticing the toolmarks that remain. They tell us so much about the techniques and sculptural skills of artists. From one era to the next, you can quickly notice how technology evolve, and how this changes the possibilities of the medium. These are the traces of work. I left marks of wear and tear on the objects I used in this show. No material is entirely time-proof. Thinking that artworks will survive through the centuries is a kind of utopian dream. In fact, everything we create is bound to disappear, one day or another. It does not have to be a big deal. For this project, I wanted to record traces of time, of the history of objects, of their handling. I think that, depending on time and context, the meaning of artworks evolve, either because we no longer have the right keys to decipher it or because we ascribe new meanings on it. It is probably this renewed attention and the subsequent interpretations we bestow upon them that allow works of art to travel through time. I simply wanted to integrate this potential movement within my process itself.