Gallery 1 — Michelle Heon

Barque 1995

Espace des Arts, Colomiers, France — Metallic structure and wood clayons covered with shredded denim — The lighting setting produce moving water reflection on the vault — Floor covered with sand — H.185 x L. 800 x W. 175 cm.

The indispensable Vessel

(…) “In modern times, the evolution of the ship into a mechanical machine, from the steamboat to the nuclear submarine, has transformed it into a symbol of modernity, an ideal of human progress and historical triumph over Nature.

At the same time, the ship has always been comparable to a ship of memory offering to man a particular and floating aspect, an indeterminate space of historical reflections. These reflections are, as history has shown, the indispensable conditions for the survival of man over time. This is why it is not surprising that the speeches, the descriptions, the narratives, both textual and visual, were born almost at the same time as the invention of the boat. In other words, an art history linked to the image of the boat is almost as old as that of the boat itself, and evolves with the progress of the shipbuilding industry. (…) then to use the image of the boat and to reconsider its symbolic and metaphorical significance becomes, in a sense, necessary. This is to say that using the image of the boat and re-interpreting its definition is still, of necessity, of a meaning and a relevant aspect in contemporary art. Michelle Héon, as a contemporary artist, convincingly testifies to this aspect through her work.

It is not difficult to understand this through her installation; Michelle Héon essentially shows us images or situations of boats taken as symbols of survival before they are doomed to sink into the unfathomable depths of the ocean. Naturally, looking and touching (his work always invites the participation of spectators) the blue color, both beautiful and poetic and which dominates the whole of his work, can make us feel a certain smell of nostalgia here or there. However, historical reflections, metaphysical ideas about memory and, more importantly, the imagination of possible outcomes, immediately replace nostalgia. The will of the sublime prevailed over private and personal sensibility – the artist never intended to limit himself, or to limit his expression in a refuge of sentimental discontent, or even to reduce his work into a romantic sigh. On the contrary, it has opened up a vast space for reconsideration and posed impending questions relating to our daily life and Historicity, if it really exists.” (…).