Ring
Ring, 2012
Pinhole photographs, bronzes
Variable dimensions (each frame : 48 x 38 cm ; each bronze : diameter 7 cm / height 12 cm app.)
Production La BF15, Lyon
Courtesy Dominique Blais & Xippas Gallery, Paris
"On the wall, four hard copies show us ghostly traces produced by the arrangement of lit candles in front of a camera obscura. At the foot of each copy, Dominique Blais has laid a bronze sculpture made with the lost wax technique. It is the residual shape of the candles used to produce the photographic image. Entitled Ring, this piece refers to Wagner's opera tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung. Lasting almost 15 hours, this work breaks up into a prologue and three days. For each opera, the artist has lit a candle in front of a pinhole with the aim of exposing photosensitive paper to the effective duration of the representation. The revealed image (in negative format) functions like the abstract testimony of the flow of time relating to the presence of musical work."
Perrine Lacroix, from the press release of the exhibition "d'une seconde majeure ou mineure" (La BF15, Lyon)
"Moreover, the use of synesthetic associations (when the stimulation of one of the senses—seeing, hearing and touching—produces a different one of these sensations) makes it possible to rematerialize sound without reifying it through the use of imposing mechanisms. In the installation Ring (2012), Blais used a pinhole camera to record the burning of four candles during the same duration of time as each of the parts of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy. These unique, tenuous imprints left by light (and music and time) are associated with other imprints, the remains of the candles, which he cast in bronze using the lost wax method. These two traces, one fragile and the other unalterable, seem to indicate the paradox of memory in Blais’ work, the relationship between retaining and wiping out." Marie-Cécile Burnichon in ArtPress (n°394)
Pinhole photographs, bronzes
Variable dimensions (each frame : 48 x 38 cm ; each bronze : diameter 7 cm / height 12 cm app.)
Production La BF15, Lyon
Courtesy Dominique Blais & Xippas Gallery, Paris
"On the wall, four hard copies show us ghostly traces produced by the arrangement of lit candles in front of a camera obscura. At the foot of each copy, Dominique Blais has laid a bronze sculpture made with the lost wax technique. It is the residual shape of the candles used to produce the photographic image. Entitled Ring, this piece refers to Wagner's opera tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung. Lasting almost 15 hours, this work breaks up into a prologue and three days. For each opera, the artist has lit a candle in front of a pinhole with the aim of exposing photosensitive paper to the effective duration of the representation. The revealed image (in negative format) functions like the abstract testimony of the flow of time relating to the presence of musical work."
Perrine Lacroix, from the press release of the exhibition "d'une seconde majeure ou mineure" (La BF15, Lyon)
"Moreover, the use of synesthetic associations (when the stimulation of one of the senses—seeing, hearing and touching—produces a different one of these sensations) makes it possible to rematerialize sound without reifying it through the use of imposing mechanisms. In the installation Ring (2012), Blais used a pinhole camera to record the burning of four candles during the same duration of time as each of the parts of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy. These unique, tenuous imprints left by light (and music and time) are associated with other imprints, the remains of the candles, which he cast in bronze using the lost wax method. These two traces, one fragile and the other unalterable, seem to indicate the paradox of memory in Blais’ work, the relationship between retaining and wiping out." Marie-Cécile Burnichon in ArtPress (n°394)
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