Stéphane Thidet – Au bout du souffle, 2011

Stéphane Thidet’s works are constructed situations and one-off experiences. He might release a pack of wolves into the moat of a castle, for example, make it rain inside a hut, or get a motorcyclist to draw a circle in the fake snow. Through processes of subversion and displacement, he manipulates sounds, images, objects and natural elements. By thus transforming them he shifts reality towards the realm of imagination and disrupts conventional ways of representing things.

Au bout du souffle (“Last Breath”) is the enigmatic record of a violent event remembered from childhood. When Stéphane Thidet was eight years old, he was intrigued by the wrought-iron greenhouse at the bottom of his garden and threw a stone to break one of its panes. Thidet re-enacted this moment of childhood curiosity a few days before the opening of the exhibition Désordres — Extraits de la collection Antoine de Galbert at the macLYON when he took a hammer to the panes of a wall of steel and glass he had constructed in order to recreate the sound of breaking glass and the motifs that appeared in it. The contrasts between the solidity of the steel and the fragility of the glass, the brutality of the gesture and the subtleties of the shadows, the frenzy of the physical action and the stillness of the pieces on the floor are all part of the paradoxes in Stéphane Thidet’s installation. Presented alongside works evoking private experiences of family, friends and love, it points up the ambiguities and contradictions of human relationships.