My ligature room in a glass house
Gaspar Willmann
October 3 – November 16, 2024
Opening Thursday October 3, 2024 6-9pm
For preview
info@exoexo.paris
‘My ligature room in a glasshouse’ is the third solo show of Gaspar Willmann at Exo Exo. For the occasion the artist puts
together a set of paintings from his JUMAP series as well as a video titled Glass House (22’39’’, 2024). This video, set up as a
window in front of a ‘sit-stand’ bench, opens up on the life of Bob R. Just like the unfinished Sergueï Eisenstein’s movie Gaspar
Willmann takes his core idea from, Bob R. lives in a house only made out of transparent walls. In such a setting, his whole life,
in the most intimate corners, is exposed. This jail-like dimension is increased by the contradictory notion of «ligature room»,
a space of fragility and openness within this world of imprisonment. Through the habits and the banility, Glass House is also
showing us the narrator’s will to escape the crystal clear simulation he lives in, his discrete fight against it through his affects
and his need for singularity, even in the most blank and controlled space. This counter-dimension is embodied by the female
voice over guiding Bob R. tale. New possibilities of meanings and affects, of resistance and emotions begin to blossom trough
her ghostly subtext.
Just like Bob R. is stuck in between a false promise of coziness and an uncanny feeling and just like the visitors themselves
are being put in a wicked discomfort from the sit-stand bench, the JUMAP series also exists in between two paradigms.
These collage-like paintings are made through the overlapping of pictures from online databases and others taken by Gaspar
Willmann with his iphone. From a first and overly polished layer, becoming almost transparent or invisible because of its
overconsumption, a second layer seems to emerge, more intimate and opaque. Far from being opposed to one another, these two
levels seem to be echoing and revealing a certain proximity. Both modified by Gaspar Willmann through blurring effects, they
almost melt into one another. Like glitches hacking the system from the inside, never running away from it, Gaspar Willmann
images counteract the strictlyc onsumerist, productivist and sometimes totalitarian aspect of the pictures they originate from.
Thanks to their distorsions, these new images are revealing ways of resistance, never erased but always there in the margins.
Gaspar Willmann (b. 1995, Paris) graduated from the ENSBA (Lyon). He lives and works in Paris. His paintings and videos,
both carefully edited and modified, highlight our relationship with images, their spreading process and their affective and
collective dimension. In 2022, he was one of the finalists for the Prix des Amis du Palais de Tokyo. The following year, he won
the call for projects from the Cité de la Tapisserie in Aubusson and produced a work that was included in the collection. In 2024,
his work was added to the collections of the FRAC Pays-de-la-Loire and the FRAC Bretagne. He won the Yishu 8 Prize for a
residency in Beijing, as well as the Residency Award from the Fondation Salomon.
