“Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work begins with murmurs, with the invisible, propagation, alteration, contagion, an out of sync development at the heart of the standardized systems of the real, as though to infiltrate life.” (1)
“The work exists as a phenomenon, like a living organism, indissociable from the conditions of its emergence and the circumstances of its present.” (2)
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot invents a story, inviting the visitor to share an immersive, dreamlike experience. The artist orchestrates a crossing of territories – a crossing of the fields that characterize his interdisciplinary approach – involving the live recording of present, living phenomena within the exhibition space and the transformation of the energies that pass through it.
He marries the artificial and the natural in several grand gestures that are linked together by the flow of visitors, whose presence is an essential component of the work, and devises an apparatus that combines movement, image, and sound – the climax of his narration. The visitor finds himself on the edge, suspended between the real world he has just left and the world into which he enters. Walking through the exhibition, the visitor creates a continuous flow of images – a moving sequence imprinted with the vital energies present.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot offers a total experience, that, according to his own words, "overtakes the reference system of art " and creates enchantment with great formal simplicity, inviting contemplation and wandering, sharing a meditative experience in which we find the elements that make up the singularity of his work.
After having worked as the composer for “Side One Postume Théâtre” (1985- 1994), the theater company of playwright and director Pascal Rambert, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot set out to give autonomous form to his music through the creation of installations. Since 1994, he has worked at the crossroads of visual art and experimental music while drawing on the codes of live performance. The artist operates by sampling daily life and adding a surplus of poetry – of soul, even – to objects, musical instruments, and living beings. He dreams up devices that work in connection with the surrounding architecture or environment, taking the ideas of chance and accident as a starting point. Boursier-Mougenot’s explorations always begin with the imperceptible and go on to reveal the importance of sensory experience.
At the same time as his exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, the artist will be representing France at the 56th Venice Biennale (9 May – 22 November 2015) with an ambitious new project, rêvolutions, curated by the new director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Emma Lavigne.
Curator: Daria de Beauvais
(1) Francois Quintin, “Introduction”, in Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Etats seconds, Edition FR
