Germain Marguillard at Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain

The ‘Artists-in-Residence’ programme, led by Passerelle and Document d’Artistes Bretagne, promotes the creativity of artists starting out their careers in Brittany. This year Germain Marguillard is enjoying the benefit of this arrangement for budding artists, which includes a residency, critical and technical support and an end-of-residency exhibition. After his three months spent at the art centre he is presenting the exhibition ‘À l’infini, pas du tout’ (Ad infinitum, not at all) in which he explores the links between sciences, the occult and the symbolism of forms.

At first sight it seems difficult to link the aesthetic of Marguillard to any specific era. He takes codes of representation and ways of seeing the world which appear to be in contradiction and outside of time. The common thread of his research is esotericism; he is passionate about beliefs, practices and phenomena that cannot be explained scientifically, such as astrology, divination, magic, and parapsychology. On the other hand, he closely follows technological developments in the so-called hard sciences, including chemistry, astronomy and physics, with no scientific ambition. Marguillard sets these worlds in opposition, where they stare stonily at each other, yet they are both asking the same questions: how does matter change or transmute? What is chaos? And many other questions that could be called existential…

The artist pays particular attention to the microscopic and the gigantic, from the atom up to the galaxy. The exhibition title alludes to this, ‘Ad infinitium, not at all’, and to a certain children’s rhyme, ‘I love you a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all’. He is fascinated by objects, documents and scientific instruments. He takes ownership of many forms from this particular vocabulary including the iconic one of the particle accelerator. This type of installation allows scientists to better understand how the universe works – it is possible to recreate cosmic phenomena in a miniature version – and to study the transformation of matter. When you grasp the objectives of this machine and how it functions, it then becomes evident that it is part of the alchemical ‘bestiary’ of the artist.

Marguillard shines a light on another duality: that of tradition in the face of modernity. The techniques he uses, such as firing ceramics, are ancient and common to numerous civilisations and peoples. He combines simple decorative forms such as leaves, knotwork and spirals which powerfully recall Islamic and medieval arts. But these motifs are inspired by treatises on botany and anatomy and other scientific works. Marguillard works on linking them to sculptures which resemble technological tools where they would not at first seem to belong, because our unconscious situates them in another place. By setting down this bridge between two incompatible worlds, he reinserts symbolism and grace into the scientific world which, however, only requires utility and functionality. Presented together, his singular sculptures paradoxically recall an archaeological site as much as a state-of-the-art technological laboratory. The exhibition could relate to a ruined temple, the home of ancient myths, but its resolutely contemporary register confuses one’s reading of it. By seeking to find the spiritual in the everyday – as also In his mural works that are half screen and half stained-glass window – Marguillard questions our certainties acquired in a world where information has never before been so available and so manipulated.