THE CHAPUISAT BROTHERS – ANTRE: Les Frères Chapuisat

Empirically built following a protocol of propagation, adapting to technical constraints and to the particularities of the gallery, ANTRE is a cave of tangled wooden boards inspired by a real cavern situated somewhere in the mountains.(…) An organic excavation of a seemingly undisciplined, invasive, brutal architecture, ANTRE is a realized utopia to be discovered from the interior. A tiny opening invites the visitor to explore the entrails of the sculpture and to confront his perception with a subjective reality. From the exterior, only a white rail is visible, reminding spectators that they're inside a white cube. Those who penetrate the wall before them, overcoming their hesitation to venture through the cramped wooden entryway, disappear into a space invisible to others. The body becomes the only means to apprehend the work, and the visitor can only move forward. The violence of the entryway in this dark, unknown space gives way to gentler sensations, bringing back childhood memories – the pleasure of playing with one's whole body, the discovery by touch of organic and mineral matter. After crawling, jostling, and contorting the body in order to weave through the wooden windings, the visitor can at certain points stand tall again to enter a cave filled with red clay.