Tête-à-tête

installation/performance by Stéphane Gladyszewski

##general.period##:: 19/01 - 22/01/23

Show completed

Timetable

from 15:30 to 22:00
on 19/01, from 19:00 to 22:00

1 performance per 30'

CAPACITY
1 person

Running time

20'

Place

Espai Lliure

Language

Show no text (poem in Spanish)

Price

€7,5 - €15

Trailer
Video
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Description

We still to schedule this show, intended for Katharsis 2022 and which finally could not be presented, by the Quebecois artist Stéphane Gladyszewski: a research on identity and intimacy through the live show.

Like a small cosmos that emerges from a Renaissance painting bathed in chiaroscuro, Tête-à-tête is an experimental play halfway between the theatre of objects, an optical installation and an existential tale. To have this experience, the viewer has to put their face inside a mask that is embedded in a detachable panel. In fact, it is the face of the artist (and the performer) through which they look as if through a keyhole. Confusing their gaze with that of the performer, the spectator observes this mise en scène of a man and different organic materials (trunk, fire, rice leaves, plaster mask, apple) which unfold in front of them.

Equipped with earphones connected to an ambient sound system, the viewer is bathed in an immersive sound universe in which the voice of a boy whispers to them the words of the poet Octavio Paz, ‘Two bodies face to face (...)’. According to the principles of anamorphosis and perspective, the only vantage point presented to the looker allows the artist to work on the light and perspective of those living tableau in a perfect trompe l’oeil. Painstakingly calibrated lighting and high-precision optical elements place the spectator before their own holographic reflection. As if they were told ‘come inside my head’, the spectator travels and slides among different identity strata. Their mask comes off. In the end, the artist literally merges with the spectator, with their skin, their gaze, their expressions. Two faces combine to create a third one. The illusion of being penetrated, inhabited by a strange body. We withdraw in silence, asking ourselves whether we have actually been touched. And yet we have been, simply with the fingertips.

In 2012, Stéphane Gladyszewski is honoured with the Prize Art + Émergence by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Conférence régionale des élus de Montréal, for his creations Corps noir and Tête-à-tête.

Other shows of Katharsis 2023