In A Physical Obedience of a Certain Geometry [Nihil Sublime], Thierry Bernard-Gotteland continues to draw on the mythologies of heavy metal music and culture to create this latest body of work. His works are loaded with semiotic markers of defiance, destruction, order, control and power where social roles, cultural models and moral values are examined. Installed in accordance to the Golden Mean, the works possess a symmetry and harmony that belies their violent and aggressive titles. Incorporating text, image and sound, the exhibition is part intimate, domestic space, part aftermath of a live concert and part private fantasy. A contorted bed of ersatz leather dangling from the ceiling, metal chains, paintings of viscous black enamel, stage lights arranged in a pentagram, text from Hollywood scripts fashioned with black duct tape, a tree branch bandaged with tape, the whirring sound of industrial fans whose movement creates discordant noise from a guitar lend the exhibition a sexy, sensual and forbidden atmosphere.
The artist states, “Plato describes humans as prisoners living chained up in Allegory of the Cave. Everything we see – shadows thrown onto the wall in front of us, screenings taking place in the cinema, in the television room, in the bedroom and also in the garage (rehearsal) – become our everyday life. Those spaces become metaphors of our daily life where dreams, nightmares and phantasma are projected to being the building blocks of such hyperreal construction. The layout of the installation is formally related to those spaces where the viewer’s body becomes the ‘personae’ of such territories.”
