2006
Dimmed electric light bulbs,
electric cables,,
220 × 550 cm,
Inv. 2006.1049 (2)/Acquired with the aid
of the FRAM Île-de-France
Notice
Jean-Luc Vilmouth hallmarks the art scene
with his special presence, highlighting
the reflexes and dysfunction of the world,
proposing new ways of living together,
new types of relationship. In the early
1980s, he linked up with the artists
involved with new British sculpture
and, like them, appropriated the world
of objects, which became his formal
vocabulary. He called himself ‘the friend
of objects’, their ‘augmenter’, and he
gave them a real power. Using them as
intermediaries, but remaining at a remove
from the everyday, he reveals their
quintessence, creating unexpected and
intriguing situations in the public place,
the better to question and challenge it.
Nature is also one of the subjects of his
work: a nature that is rendered artificial
and comes into conflict with the human race.
The distance from the world maintained by
Jean-Luc Vilmouth is nevertheless something
that is the result of great attentiveness.
He is forever criss-crossing the planet,
either on his own initiative or in response
to invitations, nurturing his critical
vision of it as he does so.
White Building came out of trips to Cambodia
in 2005. Invited to Phnom Penh, Jean-Luc
Vilmouth was struck by the existence of a
building constructed in the 1960s by an
assistant of Le Corbusier, the Cambodian
architect Vann Molyvann, based on the
utopian model of the Cité Radieuse, the
functionalist European project that he took
into a shantytown. The inhabitants set up
home in this unfinished building, and
transformed it. Life held triumphed in it,
as did local customs.
This ensemble, which was on view in the
museum’s second show devoted to the issue
of being present in the world (2007–2008),
consists of three pieces, with only one,
The Name, being exhibited today, serving
as a souvenir of the previous exhibition
and of the work in its entirety. White
Building bears witness to an architectural
and social utopia abandoned in the face
of political changes and to the needs of
everyday life; today, only its ruins
remain.
It is from this distortion between project
and reality that the beauty of this piece
emerges. It is an installation of objects
and drawings, together with this name in
light, the wires on the wall calling to
mind a precarious electrical installation,
but also the ramification of projects, and
life in the making.
Today, the light sign resurrects the memory
of the work and that of the utopias that
continue to illuminate life. Often
disappointed, and often forgotten about,
they remain a beacon for the future.
A.F.