“The Lack”, Christian Berst Presents Sophie Calle’s Reflection on Absence
The exhibition “The Lack” is the result of a dialogue built around works either created or collected by Sophie Calle, alongside pieces of Art Brut selected from the Christian Berst gallery. Featuring truncated bodies, silhouettes fading into darkness, shadowy zones, crossed-out or hidden texts and eloquent omissions, the exhibited works resonate within the same register of absence. Rather than responding to the gallerist’s invitation to curate the show, Sophie Calle proposed a collaborative approach: “I asked Christian Berst to search in his storage for works that conceal something,” she says. For Sophie Calle, absence is a creative force, an invitation to repair, to reconstruct through storytelling, to exist through the other by transforming ordinary objects into relics of incomplete stories.
Opposite her, Art Brut draws the contours of an inner world where the viewer must fill in the blanks, imagine a narrative. Each Art Brut piece becomes an attempt at reconstruction, an intimate response to what has been lost… or never found. These missing parts reveal a paradoxical presence, a story greater than what is shown to us. In the adjoining exhibition space, the Bridge, Gaël Charbau unveils a lyrical survey of John Urho Kemp’s enigmatic drawings and installations.
At the exhibition opening, we crossed paths with Aure Atika, Aurélie Filippetti, Patrick Mille, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Sonia Perrin, Serge Toubiana, and Marc Donnadieu.
Photos: Michael Huard
