Memory and the sea – Between two – 2018

Sometimes poetic expressions are used that are so smooth that they look like worn pebbles. One hesitates in front of the mawkishness of which they are provided but invariably, one returns to them, as if to caress old clichés, happy banalities to which we cling in spite of everything so much they resound in our memories. It is necessary to think in this way, but also under the auspices of humor and an astonished stroll, to experience the title “Memory and the Sea” that “Entre/Deux”, Rebecca François and Lélia Decourt, propose for their exhibition of works dedicated to the sea.

Memory is the place of what endures on the ruins of erasure. The sea is this moving space, “always starting over” to quote Paul Valéry, this uncertain element where the fate of the waves will remain to run aground on the shores. Metaphor charged for both of these terms that play the same interlacing in our imaginations. Also to put in image this proposal is to take the risk to empty it of its poetic force to contain it in the only seductive surface of the illustration. But here again, we must look for an origin, an etymology of this “illustration”: It is the luster, the light. This flow of light that remains the essence and the constancy of the maritime space.

The exhibition gathers these residues of light, these hesitations between permanence and continuous movement. It is thus set up as a place of an imbalance which also puts into play our principles of perception and our body stability. It is no longer a question of representing but of measuring oneself against this universe which attracts us as much as it frightens us. The sea contains its sirens as memory returns with its demons and regrets to strike the shores of our present. Drawings, photographs, videos and other compositions testify to a puzzle impossible to put back together. Like the sea, memory, poetry…