CAC Brétigny

The last two decades have witnessed new ceremonies shaping up at the entrance to public spaces. A guard who takes a suspicious look at the contents of your bag at the entrance to a shopping mall or museum, a pat-down before getting into a concert, a dreary march through a metal detector on the way to boarding your flight… These security measures, specific to border areas normally, are spreading to all places that welcome numbers of people. 

Taking their cue as much from Big Brother as from the theater of Guy de Cointet, OPJ Cyganek and Julie Poulain are pleased to present “Control,” an installation that is meant to echo Théâtre Brétigny’s “Ni dieu, ni maître” (Neither Lord nor Master) cycle. The two artists use a good dose of humor to reappropriate in the theater’s foyer and public spaces the codes and the esthetic of the airport security screening area. 

Through a series of photographed gestures, accessories and furniture, the artists observe the inscribed attitudes, spontaneously adopted in such security contexts, and call into question these more or less intrusive procedures which our society has grown accustomed to. The display of a series of “inspection objects” (ceramic sculptures more or less directly inspired by certain inspection gestures and materials) piques the curiosity of viewers, inviting them to dream of other possible gestures, more playful, more sensitive too, in a dance that is both absurd and offbeat.

Graduates of the École Nationale d’Arts of Paris-Cergy, OPJ Cyganek and Julie Poulain have worked as an artist duo since 2011. Through performance, installation, sculpture, and photography, they explore the ambiguities of our connections to the Other, between sharing and defense, the urge to be together and the self-affirmation. In fields that are as highly codified as sports, the white-collar business milieu, or the representation of couples, they point out the codes and behaviors that govern relationships in our society. Through a play of reworking and reappropriation, they reinterpret these gestures to create new, more poetic ones. Developing protocols then that often combine installation and performance, a consciously staged scene and its activation in front of an audience, they invent other ways of exchanging and connecting with the Other. The two have shown their work for a variety of exhibitions and performances, including “Les hameçons” (performance) at the Jean Collet Gallery in Vitry-sur-Seine in 2018; “REPETITIONS (Electric night, vol. 18)” at the palais des paris in Takasaki (Japan) in 2017; “Dans le vague” at the École d’Art du Calaisis of Calais in 2017; “En apnée” and “Faire signe” (performances) at the Maison des arts of Malakoff in 2017; and “Je-u” (performance) at the Salon fanzine art & culture of FRAC PACA (Marseille) in 2017.