Rouge Léviathan 2015

Collégiale Sainte-Croix, Loudun, France — Painted and printed silk fabric sewn on tarlatan, metallic structure — H. 280 x L. 1030 x D. 190 cm — Video projections — Immersive sound events by Barah Héon-Morissette.

“Rouge Léviathan, a poetic theatre of operation. In the large nave of the Collegiate Church, a undulating sculpture unfolds, rising towards the spectator. It is a wave, the hull of an overturned boat, the rounded back of a marine giant, a mythical animal. Her supple body, the folds and folds of her undulating skin, made of red silk, are of a profusion all baroque. If this luxuriance awakens sensations of opulence, a doubt seizes us. This sumptuous aspect combined with a certain symbolism of ruin (1) (...) is the force of evocation of materials.

They come and go, they go and they come leaving wake of uncertain foam. (2)

Elsewhere, a path of the apse invites us to travel. In the alcove of a chapel, an oculus lets glimpse a frail boat: the primitive architecture, pierced, balloon, between and out of the field of vision; the boat with the resemblance of toy floats as well as bad on the agitated foam. Further on, as through an approach telescope, the waves of a red sea, with the crests of foam, the ebbs and flows slowly melt into each other.

A still journey in the imagination here reminds us that the essential thing is to be totally present to what is present (3).”

© Sabine Barbé 2015, Paris, France. Excerpt from French text: Rouge Léviathan.

(1) René Viau, Géographie imaginaire, 2011 (2) Kenneth White, Les archives du Littoral, 2011 (3) Kenneth White, Ars Géopoéitica, 2011.