Charles Pétillon: Modulations Domestiques

“Modulations Domestiques” marks a major shift in the artist’s œuvre, with renewed underlying ideas. Whereas his invasions, as he calls them, used to play on accumulation and saturation, pushing boundaries of space and objects, his recent works rely on interaction. Their intent is to expand on architecture, engaging into a dialogue with it and underlining its specificities. The forms are becoming more structured, organized, sometimes even going towards refined lines.

Building on the same minimalistic motif of the white sphere, Charles Pétillon enlarges his scope of intervention, moving from photographic set ups to physical, lasting installations with delicate shapes designed to be part of an interior. These new domestic- sized works are in line with many in situ projects set in cities like Beijing, Macau, Bordeaux, and more recently at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport with a monumental creation now hanging in one of the terminals.

The white balloons used by Charles Pétillon in his photographic installations have been staged in various contexts. But on several occasions, he has shown them in an airborne manner (Cloud Computing, Mutations, Ribambelles series...). It is in this same spirit that these aerial sculptures, evocative of clouds as much by their forms as by their names, are designed.

The history of modern and contemporary sculpture has been punctuated by many efforts seeking to liberate sculpture from the constraint of weight and to break away from traditional methods of presentation in favor of vertical hanging. From Alexander Calder to Ernesto Neto, many artists have thus sought throughout the 20th century to give their works a more aerial dimension. It is in this tradition that Charles Pétillon is involved with these suspended sculptures.

Charles Pétillon excels in what we might call the art of visual haiku. With the short Japanese poems, his creations share the same inclination toward capturing a moment, toward the concise evocation of the elusive nature of the world, and the same deceptive simplicity. In his photographic installations, all that remains is the silence that follows man’s departure and his absence.

One could say that the intention of the artist is to highlight the imprint of man on his environment, the complex relationships between nature and society. To highlight, and not to decipher nor to give away. A world in suspension then appears, where things are not yet definite but purposely maintained as potentialities. A world in suspension that reaches out beyond the works themselves and extends over time, and in the mind of the viewer.