Mandrake a disparu (Mandrake has disappeared)
Group show
Artists : Ismaïl Bahri, Badr El Hammami, Maïder Fortuné, Claire Malrieux, Julien Prévieux, Alexander Schellow
Curator : Olivier Marboeuf
Espace Khiasma / Les Lilas
March 22 - May 18, 2013
Link to the exhibition / Français
About the exhibition / Français
By referencing a magic trick, Mandrake a disparu highlights a unique space and type of illusion. Centered on the figure of the show magician — Mandrake being a symbolic name for this role — this magician-led magic, reminiscent of early cinema, is presented as a space of shared experience.
The illusion is thus, paradoxically, what allows us to see. The trick is a way to learn how to look at the edges and the magician is the intermediary who accompanies the birth and disappearance of images. As a projectionist, he opens the viewer to what is not yet there. What then would magic be without a magician, as the exhibition title suggests? Perhaps it would be an entry into a new regime: that of simulation, where the operator is replaced by mathematical calculations, and where magic is no longer a terrain for learning about the visible but a strategy of concealment. Following the lead of Isabelle Stengers and Philippe Pignarre, who see in contemporary capitalism a magic system without magicians, that is, a formless and disembodied entity that acts by enchanting, Mandrake a disparu questions this particular situation of magic without grasp, which simulation implies.
This first exhibition in a series dedicated to this question brings together numerous artists who, contrary to this regime of disappearance, continue to imagine crude magics, narratives, and diversions as signs of presence inviting the collective experience of the images that come to us.
