13 Nov 2012

Jorge Peris : Tamaris at Musée du château, Montbéliard

An immaculate hearth that is completely dressed up in salt stands as a welcoming preamble for visitors to the current exhibition, reminding them that the museum is and remains a château as well. Existing somewhere between architecture and a traditional ingle, this immense mineral hearth announces a visit rich in experience and experiment, where installations, sculptures, objects, videos and drawings offer a seemingly endless dialog. This is Jorge Peris's first solo exhibition in France and all of the pieces have been produced specifically for it.

A native of Valencia, Peris has been developing for over a decade now a body of work that contrasts industry--its architecture, spaces, machines and hectic activity--with nature. For Peris, industry looks to be the laboratory of the world, making and unmaking our environment, where man seems to be trapped amid experiments that go beyond him. The salt hearth and its infinite--and perhaps functional--exhaust highlight above all an assembly of zinc pipes, running their unstoppable way above the galleries like the twists and turns of a maze. From these hanging structures hangs in turn an installation featuring multiple lengths of rope over which salt is crystalizing over time, dripped there from bottles filled with salt water.

In light of the world of machines, nature and her ways of resisting, like the tamarisk, that Mediterranean tree that manages to grow in soils with a high salt content, raise many questions. Numerous collages made from nineteenth-century naturalist prints, feature a hostile visionary marine world. Fish heads bristling with all their teeth jut from their supports like trophies, while threatening octopus heads, long separated from the sea, are spread out on paper. Tortoise shells, snake spines and other sorts of claws punctuate drawings heightened with watercolor, whose bright dabs of color seem to want to “illuminate” insects and reptiles in order to lend them a final, almost symbolist impulsion.

Further along eggs, discreetly spotting a sheet of paper, hold out the promise of a rebirth. Peris's show is indeed designed as a laboratory: a crystallization of salt meant to be observed day by day, enigmatic images of upside-down horizons, sleeping butterfly larvae that may awake in spring… Combining organic and industrial materials, Peris's constantly evolving works are the product of fanciful experiments. A magic wand made of cypress, copper wire and octopus gelatin, a handmade bow with salted ends and an old cane are seen at the entrance to the show. Like tools, relics or war booty, they may well be the keys to the story of Tamaris.

A blend of natural science and cultural heritage, the exhibition echoes not only the museum departments, but also the local history of the salt industry.

Jorge Peris, born in 1969, lives and works in Valencia.

A monograph devoted to Jorge Peris's work, coproduced by the Musées de Montbéliard, is available from Editions AGMA, Vienna