29 January 2021
Exhibition "Les assises du temps perdu"
Exhibition "Les assises du temps perdu"
by Anthony Guerrée
with Atelier Jespers at Cornette de Saint Cyr
from 1 to 12 February 2021
Monday to Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 6pm
CORNETTE DE SAINT CYR
6, avenue Hoche
75008 PARIS
Member Anthony Guerrée is pleased to announce the exhibition "Les Assises du Temps Perdu". Through a series of sculptural chairs, he brings to light the protagonists of Marcel Proust's celebrated novel À la recherche du temps perdu. A curation proposed by Brussels gallerist Jean-François Declercq (Atelier Jespers) in partnership with the auction house Cornette de Saint Cyr, which is hosting the exhibition in its mansion in Paris, from 1 to 12 February 2021.
« I read Proust as one has a dream, and I very quickly wished to keep a trace of it, to fix my perception of the characters by making them visible and giving them a real place in space, giving them a seat. »
While the decorative arts abound in Proust's prose to give substance to his characters, Anthony Guerrée's aim was to "turn into chairs" the traits and attitudes of the characters Albertine, Elstir, Odette, Swann, Verdurin, Vinteuil, Charlus and Saint-Loup, through a broad palette of expressive materials, graphic forms and singular textures.
The exhibition is held in the mansion, where the sculptural seats seem to converse with one another atop their podiums. A staging that invites the visitor to encounter these character-chairs, accompanied by quotations from the novel. This sumptuous setting evokes Proust's youth in the family apartment located nearby, facing the Parc Monceau, where one can easily imagine the protagonists strolling along its paths. A novelistic setting that plunges us straight into the Proustian universe.
The Cornette de Saint Cyr mansion
The publishing house and literary review Bouclard is dedicating a book to this project, published exclusively in their collection "L'officine, cabinet de curiosités littéraires". A limited edition featuring the chair designs, the quotations from Marcel Proust that inspired them, the research notes and the texts describing each character. This unique book, at the crossroads of literature and design, will be available for sale during the exhibition.
Preface by Jérôme Bastianelli, president of the Société des amis de Marcel Proust, and afterword by Emilie Houssa.
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"I knew that I should not possess this young cyclist unless I also possessed what was in her eyes. And it was consequently her whole life that inspired my desire; a painful desire, because I felt it unrealisable, but intoxicating, because what had until then been my life, having suddenly ceased to be my whole life, was now only a small part of the space stretched out before me which I burned to cover, and which was made up of the life of those young girls, offered me this extension, this possible multiplication of oneself, which is happiness."
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Albertine
"Elstir's studio appeared to me like the laboratory of a sort of new creation of the world, in which, from the chaos that is all the things we see, he had drawn — painting on various rectangles of canvas that were set in every direction — here a wave of the sea angrily crushing its lilac foam upon the sand, there a young man..."
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
Elstir
"This opinion of my parents concerning Swann's relations seemed to them afterwards confirmed by his marriage to a woman of the second-rate society, almost a kept woman, whom, moreover, he never sought to introduce to me, continuing to come alone to our house, though less and less often, but from whom they believed they could judge — supposing that this was where he had taken her — the milieu, unknown to them, that he habitually frequented."
Du côté de chez Swann
Swann
"Of Vinteuil's music, phrases unnoticed at Madame Verdurin's, obscure larvae then indistinct, became dazzling architectures."
Le Temps retrouvé
Vinteuil
"But, Monsieur Swann, you shall not leave without having touched the little bronzes on the chair-backs. Isn't the patina soft enough? No, go on, with your whole hand, touch them properly.
- Ah! If Madame Verdurin starts fondling the bronzes, we shan't hear any music this evening, said the painter.
- Be quiet, you're a wicked man. After all, she said, turning to Swann, we women are forbidden things less voluptuous than this. But there is no flesh comparable to it!"
Du côté de chez Swann
Mme Verdurin
Photos of the chairs by Roland Tisserand at Atmosphères d'ailleurs
photos of the book by Papier Plié