The architectural abstractions of Jean Christophe Nourisson.


Over the last ten years, Jean-Christophe Nourisson has created abstract sculptures, often conceived, without being strictly in situ, as sets that respond to the exhibition places. One of the most complex examples in this regard was the construction entitled On the edges, 2^nd version (Sur les bords, 2^ème version) on show in 1996 in two rooms facing each other of Fort Beauregard in Besancon. Within  this Vauban architecture, each of the vaulted and stonewalled rooms was inhabited by a large 4 x 4 m smooth and sloping floorboard, painted in a pure red, which took possession of the space, but permitting the viewer to grasp it from the sides. Detached, sloping and mounted on wooden fixtures, this floorboard staged a balancing act of rafters themselves, supporting volumetric wooden structures, which were sandpapered on the outside and painted white on the inside. In one of the rooms, only one parallelepiped structure with large openings occupied a rather central position on the floorboard. The opposite floorboard staged two structures, fairly cubic with narrow openings and interconnected by a bridge supported by rafters, which followed the sloping movement. This bridge and its small stairs leading to the cubic volumes with openings like doors and the fact that some of the rafters could be identified due to their standard thickness, gave an architectural connotation close to the figurative. In this work, the viewer can easily relate the volumetric structures to housing units or rooms. However, it is the abstract quality of the sculpture that affects the viewer, an abstraction appointing architecture (one could say the "architecturability") as its field of exploration.

    Two interpretations may be deduced from an initial observation. One interpretation stems from a physical experience. Although the viewer is aware of walking on a solid horizontal floor (considering the thickness of the Vauban walls), it is a bit unsettling to experience the sloping of the floorboard and the floating aspect of the volumetric structures. The vast red tilted surface and the significant importance of the geometrical volumes accentuate the thinness of the structure that support these sloped balancing acts. The foundations, which ought to be areas of seating and stability, turn out to be fragile, thereby raising doubts and almost causing dizziness, which leads the viewer to an imaginary state : "What if this room that I am in and that I perceive as a spatial unity, although I cannot see what supports it, were in the process of overturning? What if this situation that I dominate - only a being smaller than myself could live in these rooms -, were nothing more than a link in a chain of situations? Who observes me from the outside while I gaze further at these cubes? What do we know about the horizontal? Don't the Australians feel that they have their feet on the ground ?..."

    The other interpretation, albeit dependant on the composition of the volumes and the colours, is more conceptual. It makes an implicit reference to Malevitch - more precisely to something malevitch'ien: the dynamics of the transversal structures, the creation of floating mass (they are definitely the "floating" floorboards), the red, the white, and the relationship of the proportion between the geometrical structures and the lines that connect them or prolong them. More precisely, the floating aspect certainly refers to the history of Constructivism and also to the avant-garde geometrical abstraction. On the one hand, the sculpture conjures up the utopia of an idealistic architecture: in the solid shell of these Vauban walls, the cubes and the parallelepipeds are as if held in suspension by the rafters that support them, thus resembling the imponderable scale models of a borges'ien (Luis Borges) dream. On the other hand, this impression of a factory, reinforced by the materials (the industrial plywood, the rafters, the white coating) refers to the very tangible pragmatism of industrial Functionalism. Then again, it is necessary to mention that this aspect is presented through an undermining of the architectural functions. It is about deconstruction as much as it is about construction. This second interpretation raises questions. Why does a contemporary artist decide to establish a "bridge" between his artistic work and Constructivism from the beginning of the 20th century? To what extent is it a quotation? A remake? Other works by Jean-Christophe Nourisson confirm this reference and clarify it. In 1995, the artist began a set of small cubic boxes 15 x 15 cm, made out of thick and rough cardboard. Hanging from the wall, the boxes had a frontal opening revealing a square photogram protected by glass (5 x 5 cm). Randomly disposed, this composition of  boxes enters the viewer's space, but in an unimposing way. He must change position, isolating each identical cube, in order to get a glimpse of which important sculpture of the 20th century emerges as a small white shadow on black paper : the Guitar of Picasso, the Contre-relief of Tatline, the Space-light Modulator of Moholy Nagy. This idea of the photogram is soon invested up again by the artist with choices that confirm the intentions. For example, in the piece Manifestos (Manifestes) dating from 1997, the boxes are now larger, and from a distance they look like "black squares on a light grey background". On these squares, the viewer reads - with effort however, because the font of the letters is small and the photograms do not provide sharpness - the main manifestos that marked the succession of the avant-gardes. The Leftovers (Les Residus) from 1997 and 1998 have larger dimensions (100 cm x 130 cm) and are flatter: without the volumes in which they were previously inserted, they now seem to challenge painting or maybe photography. In fact, their iconographical reference is architecture: one series shows the trace of Malevitch's architectones; another series, of the same dimensions, shows three-dimensional renderings of geometrical abstraction pertaining to certain significant experimental exhibitions. Thus, the photogram refers to a facet of the history of modernist art: the concepts of process (Man Ray, Christian Schad, the Bauhaus) and iconography (sculpture from 1912 to approximately 1940, architecture, exhibitions, manifestos). The photogram also reveals the making of this history, by means of reproduction, as it is obviously the cut-out photographs that have permitted this authentic trace of light on the photographic paper. Moreover, the majority of Jean-Christophe Nourisson's sculptural works, whether constructions or photograms, are approached in a manner analogous to Minimalism, meaning in a physical, "phenomenological" manner, owing to the proportions, the spatial arrangement and the balance which is created between these volumes and the movement of the viewers. The "bridge" that connects the beginning of the century to the artist creates an ark towards Judd. A more adequate metaphor would probably be to say that the work describes a chain of situations: within the geometrical abstraction, which includes Minimalism, there is something of Constructivism or Suprematism, which provides a core of meaning, or more precisely, something of modernity, which witnessed the substitution of mass by volume in sculpture. Furthermore, it is a modernity that has created flatness in painting and space in architecture.

    In short, the work refers to this history of abstraction, which has pushed to its extreme the idea of modernity, that is to say, this same modernity - reinforced by the ambitions of the avant-garde movements - which aroused the reproach of subscribing to a utopian kind of teleology. In his book Le partage du sensible, author Jacques Rancière re-establishes the stakes of this modernity in a political perspective determined by the way the arts appear. The philosopher's argument first addresses the dominant artistic discourse concerning modernity, which focuses on the autonomy of painting, stating that painting seeked its definition through its specificity, that of flatness. Dismissing the validity of this alleged definition search, the philosopher reminds us that whatever the content attributed to the plane, its occurrence is in itself politically significant and historically linked to a global change pertaining to "the sharing of perception". On must quote him: "This type of painting, so poorly defined as abstract and referring, so to say, to its own medium is part of a general vision of a new man living in new buildings and surrounded by different objects. Its flatness is linked to that of a page, of a poster or a carpet. It is one of interface. And its anti-representative 'purity' partakes of a context that interweaves pure art and craftwork ; a context that gives this painting a direct political significance" ¹. By specifically showing the structural  the page and the "surface of painted signs", which resides in a global vision of different categories within the "sharing of perception" since Plato, Rancière demonstrates how the flatness of the page and of paintings introduces a system of egalitarian forms, which is missing from the system of imitation and perspective, which allocate a hierarchical position to the viewer as well as to the represented object. We may add that the "surface of painted signs" is also the white page, the flat monochrome, not knowing "whom to speak or not to speak to, destroying all legitimate foundation for the circulation of speech, the relationships between the effects of speech and body positions in communal spaces" ². Originally, Mallarmé, the creator of abstraction in writing, testifies to the effect of this interface as being an awareness of a shared community freedom, stemming from form itself. In an article on Manet (creator of the "first modernist paintings on account for the honest manifestation of surface" ³, Mallarmé writes : "The integration of levels of society excluded from politics in France is a social fact that will honour the end of the 19th century. We encounter a parallel in the arts, the roads having been paved by an evolution, in which the public perceived, with rare foreknowledge and from its first manifestation, the inflexible epithet, which in a political vocabulary signifies radicalism and democracy" ⁴. In this uncompromising, radical and democratic approach Suprematism and Constructivism have modelled the surface all the way to the opening of space, the ultimate locus for the sharing of perception, which needed to preserve its just neutrality and clarity. In fact, this is how the new sculpture, starting with Picasso's guitar in 1912, is articulated in architectural terms. Cutting out pieces of paper, cardboard and sheet metal, Picasso transforms the interface page / canvas by folding, thus transmuting mass, which was the former definition of sculpture, into a volume open to the interpretation of the viewer. Tatline quickly seized this idea of volume, inserting it - thanks to his Contre-relief - into real space, divided and defined by wall surfaces. It is these same surfaces, which define transparency and sharing of space - the arrangement by means of planes; the use of the white page in architecture (the Conceptual artist) - that the Minimalist artists reactivated, discovering with delight a Constructivism, long occulted by politics (both in the Western and Eastern countries), and representing the modernist architecture that originally surrounded them.

    Turning back to the work of Jean-Christophe Nourisson, we can now see what it is that makes a contemporary artist refigure - both in iconographic, semantic and abstract terms - the history of abstraction. No one can overlook the impact of the questioning of the modernist discourse over the last two decades. This questioning was simply the artistic expression of the decline of the great teleological narratives proclaiming in a more or less near future the happy end of history (Christianity, Hegelianism, Marxism, the progress of the avant-gardes ending with the disappearance of the frontier between art and life). So when Lyotard ⁵ correctly announced the end of these narratives, it lead to two different visions of Postmodernism. According to Lyotard, the sincere aim of those who  deconstructed these narratives was to continue man's self-knowledge and maintain the relationships between man and between men and the world. The other point is about starting to take advantage of questioning those values, which were supported by these great narratives, and to the extent of requesting the abolishment of all values within a general eclecticism. Such a position soon revealed its strategy aimed at creating spectacular ways and also creating the feigning of fleeting sensations for the benefit of the merchandise and those who manipulate it. This kind of Postmodernism possesses a power of exploitation rendering the artist's position uncertain.

    The work of Jean-Christophe Nourisson does not assert an easy confirmation, but exposes the tensions of an ethic construction. He moves on the edges. The Leftovers (the photograms) are probably most explicit about these tensions. Not as neat as the large constructions which take the viewer into an imaginary state, they can be interpreted as pure Modernism nostalgia. The quality of the photographic paper behind the glass window, the problem of the trace left by the phootgram of which the fragile effect appears on the edges of the black and white, the volume vanishing in the whiteness - all these observations remind us that: "it has existed". But if these flat white figures encircled by black, and the blurred writing of the manifestos indicate the end of utopia as do unstable floorboards that raise a critique of Functonalism, thus we must refrain from seeing it as a expression of post-modern melancholy. Shaken in its foundations by its own utopian visions of which we have all too often seen the other side of the coin - especially, in the countries where Constructrivism was the most radical - geometrical abstraction, symbol of modernity, does no longer bear any faith. From this faith stems the mourning; from this force of conviction that made the editors of the manifestos want to conquer the world. It is this conviction that weakens. In architecture, the Functionalist ability of reproduction - an important industrial factor - has not failed in transforming the egalitarianism into monotonous demagogy. Being uncertain whether the values of equality will lead to a happy end for history or not, does not imply that it is now necessary to give up on the democratic models. Thus, Lyotard has remarked that the great narratives were not just simple myths, but hope for emancipation. Through the experience of an abstraction preserving the presence of the plane and of space, where perception is divided without hierarchical attribution, Jean-Christophe Nourisson is interested in showing that ethic force which was greatly asserted during the first installation. If the edges become fragile while the artist reworks the plane surface, it is because they enrich and interweave the spaces. For example, the photograms of the 'architectones' - while appearing to reinstate a tabula rasa - introduce in fact within the malevitch'ien structures an infinite variety of series that are virtually inscribed in the complex cut-out of the borderlines. Thus, the reproduction of the image - referring to this quality of reproduction that seems to govern Postmodernism - contains in itself a principle of openness. Here, the ghost of modernity reunites with the arousal of an imaginary state, which is so expressive in the sculpture duo created for the Vauban fortress. The modernity desired to break free from past and directed its creative spirit towards the sole resolution of the end of history. While confirming the ethic position of the plane, which is the interface of the written page, of photography and of architecture, Jean-Christophe Nourisson also feeds the radical aspect which geometrical abstraction seemed to exclude with the return of art historical forms and the imaginary state.

Sylvie Coellier Translate by Pernille Grane.

¹  Jacques Rancière, "Le partage du sensible, esthétique et politique", Paris, La Fabrique-éditions ; p. 20.

²  Ibid. ; p.15.

³  Clement Greenberg, "La peinture moderniste", here in its first translation in french, in Peinture, cahiers théoriques, 8/9, 1974 ; p. 34.

⁴  Stéphane Mallarmé, "The Impressionists and Edouard Manet", 1876, in Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, presented by Carl-Paul Barbier, Paris, Librairie Nizet, Vol. 1, 1968.

⁵  Jean-François Lyotard, "La condition post- moderne, rapport sur le savoir", Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1979.