Multiple of 107 Keys, mixed media, 2021
This piece is a multiple consisting of 107 keys to the Galerie Michel Journiac, handed out to visitors during the opening night.
Faced with the impossibility of functionally duplicating the gallery’s key, this piece — this key — opens symbolically onto the past of Galerie Michel Journiac and its inaugural exhibition, L’Œuvre en échec (The Failed Work). This reproduction takes the form of a key made of ice — a fragile multiple.
The moment the key is placed into the visitor’s hand, its double begins to melt, inevitably recalling the impossibility of duplication. All that remains is the trace of the experience, through the keychain — a ready-made turned unique object, bearing a label inscribed with one of the 107 permutations of the letters forming the word O E U V R E — without ever composing that word itself. The word “œuvre” remains missing, still in failure.
Once the ice-key disappears, the keychain cannot be considered the work itself. It is merely its residue — the memory, and the ghosts that flicker through the exhibition space.
Action / relational gesture / performance presented at Poush.Manifesto during the opening of the exhibition Sans feu ni lieu, 2021.
Carolle Sanchez 