This book presents two 2010 exhibitions by Laurent Sfar, one at La Maréchalerie, the contemporary art centre in Versailles, and another at the gallery of le Granit, the national stage in Belfort. The trait uniting them is a special attention paid to architecture. The first, entitled Les Arpenteurs [horizon 01], concerns the organization of the Gardens of Versailles, while the second (L’hypothèse contrastive) discusses the 1984 rehabilitation of the Belfort theatre by Jean Nouvel and team. The editorial and graphical structure of the book, with its two points of entry, enables different approaches and readings of Sfar’s work. The book pivots around a central junction point among the acknowledgements. Though radically different in content, the viewpoints of the two parts are linked, for each responds to and complements the other. A series of text-less colour sections, frequently full-page, reproduces all of the work done for the exhibition at La Maréchalerie. These sections echo the colour pages dedicated to the exhibition at the gallery of le Granit. Interposed between these sequences of images are two monochrome sections, and a corpus of pages contains text Pierre Tillet penned for the Versailles exhibition, as well as its English translation, and Nicolas Surlapierre’s Belfort text. Associated notes and documents explain and supplement the pieces presented in the colour sections.
Filigranes