Greta Meert Gallery presents its second solo exhibition by Jean-Luc Moulène (Reims, 1955). As in 2007, the French artist shows his photographic work as well as a number of sculptures and a drawing. For the first time, however, this diversity underlies a thematic entity.

Jean-Luc Moulène’s work confronts us with our standardised way of seeing, our one-track perception. As a photographer, he makes use of the codes of artistic genres, the visual media and advertising, and he throws light on the social and economic relationships that necessarily accompany the production of each object or image. Apart from being a descriptive instrument, a photograph can thus also be a Product or a Document that conveys more than the mere image suggests.

Moulène’s sculptural work also aims to achieve a certain awareness in the viewer, i.e. “produire la sensibilité à la connaissance”. The human figure and the everyday object are replaced by a language of geometrical forms.

The mathematical figure of the knot forms the basis of this exhibition. The knot had been used to describe natural phenomena in various scientific disciplines, including topology, before it was introduced into psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) to represent the interdependence of the three orders of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary (Borromean knot). Jean-Luc Moulène transcends the descriptive level “pour rendre les nœuds à la nature”.

What is it that organises, constructs and transforms this figure of the knot?

In Noeud, the entwined, almost suffocating gesture is immobilised in eleven fragile sculptures that seek a balance between the lightness of the structure and the mass of the bronze material. The variations and position of the sculptures in the gallery space are rigorously determined by the official classification system of the knot.

Cartilage is an alternative design, starting from the identical topology of the knot: a surface with three holes, reduced to its third dimension.

The pictures Vagues d’algues, Commode Coulemelles, and Touffe echo a complexity that is similar to the natural phenomena the knot aims to represent, which is then measured against the limits of comprehension in the synthetic imitations Carreaux D – Carreaux G.

The diversity in interpretation and materialisation of each work, and the strong inter-relationality between the works, speak constantly to the exhibitor, and make the exhibition unfold along the nature of its central model — as a dénouement.