COMBINE 2012: Annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition

On a windy day, Simon saw sand lifted from the beach he was walking on; sand whirled in the air as water in a pool. The minute twister was too quick for his shutter, and back from Gaspésie he attempted to recreate what he saw to be a manifestation of erosion, not in images, but in motion itself, encasing the phenomenon in a Plexiglas box. Li Ciel Nerci, La Mer Trobla is the resulting diptych.

The two videos, projected and looped—one a “turbid sea,” the other a “darkened sky”—have captured and perpetuate the swirls of wind that eat away at the coast. The objects themselves are clever contraptions: painted dark or light, they isolate both sand, water and wind from the beach and from the viewer, who is further removed by their physical absence. We find ourselves stepping closer, squinting at the projected sculptures to understand their attraction, the motion trapped within.

First and foremost a reflection on the erosion of the coast, Li Ciel Nerci, La Mer Trobla also raises the question of transposition, which is prevalent in the artist’s latest work. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay Experience and Poverty (1933), Simon speaks of the loss of information incurred by the transition from one medium to another, be it photography to painting, or archaic to contemporary French. A francophone, without being conscious of it, might automatically translate the medieval Mer Trobla to Mer Trouble, which is more or less than Turbid Water, its closest English equivalent both in meaning and sound. The use of Old French brings about a certain sense of nostalgia, and one must think of the erosion of language along with that of the coast. What textures, what connotations are we losing by the mere act of understanding? And yet, do we not gain by them? Isn’t there a certain power to be found in the possibilities of transition, in the awareness of what we are transitioning from?

Extracted from the beach and confined to its glass case, the wind may lose its context and landscape, but the strength of its presence is not unfamiliar to the idea of the Sublime, of Romanticism, of its poets and their attempts to transpose their sights into verse. Caught between two panels, it also reminds one of samples and catalogues, of the wandering naturalist with his nets and vials, archiving phenomena. It reminds one, in fact, of a well-known tale: Simon has captured the wind and is keeping it captive like a Merlin in his glass cage, displayed for our contemplation.