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exhibition views from Justesse & Quiproquos by JONATHAN BINET at Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, May 2014
all images © wfw

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We mentioned his work before, but we’re happy to mention it again since French artist JONATHAN BINET is currently presenting his first solo exhibition in Switzerland. Entitled Justesse & Quiproquo (accuracy and misunderstanding), the exhibition presented at CAN in Neuchâtel, features a series of new works that eschew classification, pushing the boundaries that define painting, sculpture, and performance and deal with the tensions that exist between artist, materials, the viewer and the space art occupies.

The first sight of the exhibition, which takes place in the 270 square meters of the Centre d’Art, seems to connect a few sparse elements of sculpture, painting, and architecture to form a rudimentary space that is governed by minimal interventions, comprising spontaneously executed, rhythmically dense tangles of lines, traces and prints that allow the viewer to follow the trajectory of BINET‘s actions during the hanging.

However, on closer inspection, the whole exhibition space reveals to be highly constructed, layered and is never what it appears to be; JONATHAN BINET used the existing walls, displaced, cut them, added new architectural elements and tapes on the floor to generate new ambiguous configuration like a transparent frame, defining the inside and the outside and establishing sight lines and paths for the viewer. The specific differences between one’s first and second impressions of the exhibition add tension to the works.

Justesse & Quiproquo is less about imposing a rigid order than focusing on microevents and micronarrations that lead, as if by magic, to experience a world tenuous in its becoming. 

➝ Good news: Justesse & Quiproquo is on view at CAN Neuchâtel until May 25, 2014

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