Retour à l’école avec Mircea Cantor
Katia Bayer
The article
On Cult.news, on 19 November 2024, Katia Bayer reviews L'École des mondes, an exhibition by the Romanian artist Mircea Cantor and only the second held by Galerie Nathan Chiche, which had opened a few months earlier in Vantoux, on the outskirts of Metz.
A first part is devoted to the building. The author recalls that Jean Prouvé's school, which is entirely demountable, is said to have been erected in two weeks by two workers, that it took in pupils from 1950 to 2014, and that it is now listed as a historic monument and owned by the municipality. Nathan Chiche is introduced as the young gallerist who won the call for projects launched by the town hall.
The article then goes through the works: a rainbow painted by the artist directly on the gallery window with his thumbprints, a gesture that the article links to the fingerprinting imposed on Cantor during his trips to the United States after 11 September 2001; a Romanian alphabet primer in twenty-four sheets; maps of Romania, France, Great Britain and the world drawn in candle soot, which set the openness inherent in art against the political border.
The text ends with Fire Doina (4 min 50 s), shown for the first time in France: a man in military dress plays a wooden flute from which a flame escapes. Made in May 2022, after the start of the war in Ukraine, the film, according to Cantor, questions the persistence of creation in the midst of destruction.
« L'art, c'est l'opposé : on ouvre les frontières. »