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SIGNAL
Road sign in galvanized steel, retroreflective vinyl surface, adhesive letters 45 cm in diametre 2007 The life of Truman Burbank, main character of Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show (1998), is an elaborate reality television show. But like a man from Plato’s cave, he is the only one to be totally unaware of its true nature. Yet a badge worn by one of the actresses of the show, Lauren, hints at the deception. Pascal Bircher focuses on the small accessory and turns it into a road sign. |
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BUT YOU GET UP AGAIN
Silicone, other materials 2006 Life-size arm and head of the artist, made in a special effects studio. The title is a slight change in a phrase taken from the refrain of a 90’s British pop song by Chumbawamba: I get knocked down - But I get up again - You’re never going to keep me down. This self-portrait was the first piece the artist sold, at the FIAC Art Fair in Paris. AUTO-CRUSHED
Prints on white aluminium 3 mm 45 x 55 cm and 55 x 45 cm 2020 – ongoing Photographic self-portraits printed on paper then crumpled with others. The results of this process are then photographed and printed. WAITING FOR THE DUST TO SETTLE
Pencil on paper 33 x 45 cm 2021 HOARDER
Pencil on paper 33 x 45 cm 2021
TABLE FOR FATHER AND SON Plinth, white tablecloth, plates, audio cassette 80 x 120 x 80 cm 2002 In 1975, Thomas Bircher was reported missing. To his wife and 3 year old child, he leaves an audio cassette. His strange testament and his advice for future life will reach his son only 30 years later. Table for Father and Son unwinds the ersatz of the original tape. THEY CREEP THROUGH MY FINGERS TO THE DEEP Mixed media; in collaboration with Jacques-Alexandre Gillois 2005 Some of the walls of the labyrinth pivot, giving access to new spaces while closing off others. When one walks through the maze - seemingly under construction - the visitor creates his own topography, structures his own experience. But when new visitors arrive, the route is no longer his own. Blurring all bearings, the new configurations can turn into a trap. Living on the first floor, the gallery owner had to go through the maze on the ground floor each time he came in or went out of his apartment. The title is taken from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem A Dream Within a Dream. THE ANECDOTE
Mixed media 2008 In a building that is about to get renovated, Pascal Bircher maps one of the rooms. Before collecting them, he records the position of every forgotten object. He also samples the colour of the decrepit walls. Once the room is fully renovated, the artist returns to the space and reproduces it exactly as it was. THE SLEEPLESS
Mixed media 2003 Night installation in an abandoned house comprised of an outgrowth of black gaffer tape and a TV set which emits, in a loop, all the chromatic reflections from Tobe Hooper’s movie Poltergeist (1982). The reflections are also visible from the street outside.
UNTITLED KIT
Stainless steel, castors, black leather belts Dimensions variable 2002 OLE LUKøJE
8 x 35 x 23.cm 1998 Ole Lukøje is a Danish literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen based upon a folk tale telling of a mysterious mythic creature of the Sandman who gently takes children to sleep and, depending on how good or bad they were, shows them various dreams. All the doll parts and shoes and box were found discarded in a street SETH BRUNDLE’S DECLARATION
Glass, plywood, braille 3 x 24 x 10 cm 2003 I’m working on something that’ll change the world and human life as we know it. The phrase pronounced by the main character Seth Brundle at the beginning of David Cronenberg’s film The Fly (1986) is crucial. Pascal Bircher transcribes it in braille and encases it in a box behind a sheet of glass. The film is about the slow mutation of a scientist who’s DNA is accidentally merged with that of a fly’s during a teleportation test. WHITE WALL
Braille on white wall 8 x 1 cm 2019 The words white wall in braille are hardly visible, lost somewhere on a white wall but within reach of drifting fingers or eyes. METAMORPHOSIS 2
Glass, MDF, A0 photocopy 9 x 131 x 84,1 cm 2005 Metamorphosis 2 metamorphoses Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Each page of the paperback edition was photocopied and then assembled on a A0 sheet of paper. This was then reduced to the maximum through successive stages, then enlarged back to its original size. DON’T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME
10 pieces of tape measure of different lengths 2003 In ten different places, Pascal Bircher chooses a particular moment. He then measures precisely the distance between himself and the other. The longest measure is 142 cm, the shortest is 2 cm. 2BH_MERGER.DATA
LED display 21 x 390 x 9 cm 2010 Unfolding of the computer data used for simulating in 3D graphics a speculative astrophysical phenomena: the merger of two black holes. WORMHOLE
Video projection; 2 seconds in a loop 2007 Like the event horizon, the wormhole belongs to the astrophysicist’s lingo. It is a purely hypothetical topological feature of space-time that is essentially a short cut through space and time. Wormhole superimposes the first and last shot of Don Coscarelli’s 1979 film Phantasm. THE SEEPAGE
Black adhesive letters on public mirrors Dimensions variable 2010 - ongoing Series of subtitles from various movies on the lower part of public mirrors. Example here from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). IT'S ALL GONNA END IN TEARS
Adhesive letters on white wall 135 x 156 cm 2020 STATELY, YES.
Irmaveplab production Black adhesive letters on white wall 47 x 250 cm 2006 Like many grandfathers, John Whiting used to read stories to his grandson. But rather than choosing children’s books, he preferred James Joyce’s Ulysses, particularly parts from what is known as Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy, the last chapter of the novel. Consequently and many years later, Pascal Bircher reads Ulysses. Followed by a comma, Stately is the first word of the book. Yes is the last one before the final full stop. EN ATTENDANT
Black adhesive letters on white wall 70 x 3 cm 2014 These words consist of the exposition and dénouement from Samuel Beckett’s play En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), here united in one sentence. In English, the sentence is: A country road. A tree. They do not move. PULP
Papier-mâché Dimensions variable 2010 A copy of Samuel Beckett’s novel L’innommable (The Unnamable) reduced to a pulp, bound with starch and thrown onto the floor from a scaffolding. Once dry, presented on a wall. ROUNDABOUT
Frac des Pays de la Loire production Adhesive letters on floor; 500 cm in outside diametre 2006 Looped extract from The nature of language in Martin Heidegger’s On the Way to Language: The word for the word can never be found in that place where... MY SPECTRE AROUND ME NIGHT AND DAY 1633 letters in opaque black PMMA XT thickness 3 mm 45 x 110 x 110 cm 2008 All the letters of William Blake’s eponymous poem, assembled following the text. PASCAL BIRCHER
Oil on canvas 46 x 55 cm 2005 On Google, another Pascal Bircher is a professional badminton player. From an online photograph, Pascal Bircher commissioned a painter to do his homonym’s portrait. In 2015, the homonym contacts Bircher, interested in acquiring the painting. TÊTE DE MORT Dry pastel on paper 50 x 32 cm 2007 Pascal Bircher asked a street artist in Paris on Montmartre’s Place du Tertre to do this portrait of a human skull. SHOT-FOR-SHOT
Series of commissioned drawings 2010 - ongoing Pascal Bircher asks children (with parental permission) to reproduce drawings made by fictional child characters of their same age from screen captures of horror movies. 3, presented here, with character name and movie title: Regan MacNeil, The Exorcist (1973) Carol Anne Freeling, Poltergeist 2 (1986) Mary, The Prophecy (1995) DEAD. STILL. ALIVE Series of commissioned photographs 86 x 100 cm each 2017 - ongoing Pascal Bircher asks post-millennials (generation Z) in different countries to produce photographic portraits of their friends with some guidelines, the main one being: Ask them to pretend to be dead, lying on any chosen ground. This is obviously done with parental permission and every participant is made fully aware of the context of the project. The project is a sort of ethereal, anthropological study of connectedness and disconnectedness. Pascal Bircher then selects the images and modifies them, which are then printed and presented in portrait orientation rather than the original landscape one (part of the guideline). The 3 photographs presented here were taken by Bradley Kearns, 16, in Dunshaughlin, Ireland. DARK HORSE
Installation in 3 stages First stage dimensions 15 x 252 x 172 cm 2001 Stage 1: Wooden platform with the sound of someone walking on it playing underneath. Stage 2: Sound gone, platform sawed in half, slightly parted, with sawdust. Stage 3: two parts of platform propped vertically against pillar with structure apparent and trace of platform on the floor (the whole floor room had been painted accept for the space where the platform was), sawdust gone. MEDUSA
Polystyrene, fibreglass and polyester resin, fake wood painting 14.4 x 120 x 100 cm 2002 RETROSPECTIVE FORECAST Frac des Pays de la Loire production MDF, skull, green screen and Smiley yellow acrylic 32 x 120 x 80 cm 2006 Symbolic exchange is no longer an organizing principle; it no longer functions at the level of modern social institutions. Of course, the symbolic still haunts them as the prospect of their own demise. But this is only an obsessive memory, a demand ceaselessly repressed by the [commodity] law of value. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 1976 GREEN DOOR Door painted with green screen 204 x 72.6 cm 2020 GROTTO
Polystyrene, fibreglass and polyester resin 160 x 240 x 150 cm 2006 This is not any kind of grotto. It is a Playmobil accessory enlarged to human scale. Once inflated with its supernaturally coloured vegetation, this toy stands for a sustained contact with childhood through the synthetic representation of nature. The species are hard to identify, they are a mix of archetypes in an undifferentiated approach to flora. This simple change of scale pushes the object to become monstrously artificial, a kind of derisory arborescent isle that could be understood as a warning. A cheap ornamental element from an abandoned zoo, the ambiguous residue from a staging of nature, Grotto could stem from a missing link in evolution, a transgenic species boosted on fertilizers. A race for gigantism which strangely reminds us of today's race for efficiency and productivity, the doping for a super-species and super-performances. Finally, this grotto and its plants are not that cute. Translation of a text by Bénédicte Ramade in Acclimatation: Green Pandemonium, 2009. TEARBOX
Frac des Pays de la Loire production Acrylic and silkscreen on stratified plywood 175 x 65 x 65 cm 2006 The original Larmes artificielles is an eyewash (literally artificial tears) one can buy in pharmacies in France. The package Larme artificielle (in the singular here), reproduced using the same technique as Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, is the size of Pascal Bircher: 175 cm. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Alice starts crying when Tweedledee and Tweedledum tell her that she is not real, just a sort of thing in the King’s dream, and that if he was to wake up, she would disappear. You won’t make yourself a bit realler by crying, remarks Tweedledee. If I wasn’t real, (...) I shouldn’t be able to cry, says Alice. And Tweedledum replies: I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears? In chapter 9 of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mock Turtle is also crying. He tells Alice his story: Once, said the Mock Turtle (...), I was a real Turtle. GUM
Plaster on wire netting structure 59 x 59 x 190 cm 2009 Digitization and reproduction at a scale of 56.0 of a chewing-gum masticated by Jean-Pierre Luminet, research director for the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). This French astrophysicist, specialized in black holes and cosmology, works at the Paris Observatory where he is a member of the Universe and Theories Laboratory. Here the author of The Wraparound Universe provided a random shape, unique and intimate, usually destined to only exist for one short moment. The actual sculpture's height is the same as Luminet's: 180 cm. ATONEMENT AND BLISS
Aluminium print 45 x 55 cm 2017 Modified photograph of a billboard advertising the regeneration and gentrification of an urban area on the outskirts of London considered as an economic and social failure. The modifications are intentionally amateurish so as to reflect this nonsensical portrayal of the promise for a soon to come blissful urban life, rid of it's tainted past. RESOURCE Royal blue workwear overalls, blue balloons 30 x 180 x 150 cm 2004 THE THING
Irmaveplab production Digital film; 20 seconds in a loop 2006 In 1951, The Thing From Another World directed by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby is inspired by a short story by John W. Campbell, Who Goes There? (1934). Some 30 years later, John Carpenter directs its remake. The Thing (1982) confronts a group of scientists based in Antarctica where an alien creature that has the ability to replicate any organic life-form that it physically encounters. The Thing is the exact computer-generated reproduction of the appearance of Carpenter’s opening title, itself a reproduction of the original film’s title. In 2011 an eponymous prequel of Carpenter’s movie came out. LOST IN DARKNESS AND DISTANCE, I AM FORCED INTO SPEECH
Irmaveplab (06) and Villa Arson (08) co-production Cristal, cobalt blue, MDF, neon lighting, square steel tubes 65 x 150 x 100 cm 2006 - 2008 Lake Vostok is one of the largest subglacial lakes of Antarctica, buried under 4000 metres of ice. When scientists are able to probe its waters for signs of life without contaminating it, they hope to find a unique habitat for ancient bacteria. Having seen a documentary on TV, Pascal Bircher has an idea: to probe himself for primeval information. In order to avoid undergoing classic long term therapy, he decides to consult successive therapists and have an initial free session with each. A single one will suffice, in which the analyst concludes with these words: Sometimes, everything is on the surface. Bircher takes these words literally. With the help of scientists, Lost... is the scaled reproduction of the lake turned upside down. The ice that covers the water becomes the plinth. The basins rise above the white surface. Light from the outside is projected from the inside. Lost in darkness and distance are the last words of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, the chapter set in the North Pole. I am forced into speech are the first words of H. P. Lovecraft’s short story In the Mountains of Madness, which is entirely set in the South Pole, in Antarctica. BLUE LAKE, ROOM 12
Photograph 125 x 163 cm 2007 Some time after having made Lost in Darkness and Distance, I am Forced into Speech, while going through some old paperwork, Pascal Bircher finds out the name of the place where his father was last seen alive. In 1975, Thomas Bircher stayed for a few days in room 12 of the Lac Bleu Inn (literarily Blue Lake), somewhere in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Valais. HEATHER'S CURTAIN Photograph 150 x 110 cm 2020 A homage to Heather O'Rourke, a fascination with glitches and malfunctions, the lure of shimmering and conniving surfaces. And the blue of a screen that swallowed the world. UNTITLED ASSEMBLAGE
Mixed media Dimensions variable 2010 LAKE/LEAK # 1
Centre d’art contemporain la Synagogue de Delme production MDF, primer, blue screen acrylic 1.6 x 120 x 117 cm 2011 During a residency in a regional natural park in north-eastern France, Pascal Bircher focuses mainly on the complex outline of the artificial lake of Lindre, emptied of its water for several months. Coincidentally, that shape is superimposed with another, that of an expanding puddle in his studio from a leak in the roof. If the lake outside seems desperately empty, inside the water is seeping in, as if a strange game of communicating vessels was occurring. LAKE/LEAK # 2
Centre d’art contemporain la Synagogue de Delme production Square solid iron bars Dimensions variable 2011 The contour of the 2 shapes mentioned above in iron, interlaced and suspended from a ceiling. MODULAR INTERSTICE
Glassbox production Standard Algeco module, performance 600 x 244 x 289 cm 2009 Artist-led gallery Glassbox invited 15 artists to make site-specific works for the vacant Avicenne Foundation Building, designed by Claude Parent, at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, pending its renovation. The artists took possession of the ground floor and presented works which could only be seen from the outside, through the building's glass panels. Pascal Bircher decided to operate outside of the building, thus applying a form of secession, responding to its architecture and its transitory state by having a modular space unit placed at a specific spot. During the show, the artist came everyday for 5 hours, wearing royal blue workwear overalls and a pair of flip-flops and sat on a stack of flat-packed cardboard removal boxes reading Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. REMAKE
Diptych: Transparencies in lightboxes 14 x 120 x 160 cm (each) 2008 The hospital where Pascal Bircher was born does not exist anymore. A housing estate has replaced it. After having met council employees, delved into archives, consulted blueprints, he found the location of the room where he was born. It is now someone’s front garden. On the date and hour of his birthday, the 22nd of May at 7.40 pm, two photographs were taken simultaneously. The first one is a high angle shot of the garden, lit by a director of photography and taken by the artist. The second one reveals the technical apparatus. WELCOME
Photograph 150 x 120 cm 2021 L'être véritablement seul n'est pas celui qui est abandonné par les hommes, mais celui qui souffre au milieu d'eux, qui traîne son désert dans les foires et déploie ses talents de lépreux souriant, de comédien de l'irréparable. Les grands solitaires d'autrefois étaient heureux, ne connaisaient pas la duplicité, n'avaient rien à cacher: ils s'entrtetenaient qu'avec leur propre solitude... Emile Cioran, Précis de Décomposition, 1949
COLLIDER
VOG production 104 MDF sheets 144 x 144 x 108 cm 2014 The title refers to a type of particle accelerator. Colliders are used as a research tool in particle physics by accelerating particles to very high kinetic energy and letting them impact other particles. Analysis of the byproducts of these collisions gives scientists good evidence of the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. The shape cut in each of the sheets is based on the macro photograph of the endpoint from the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, who was also a mathematician. SYMMETRIC SELF-OCCLUSIONS
2 photographs 53 x 70 cm 2006 A SCANNER LOVELY
photograph 130 x 150 cm 2019 UNDER THE MAGIC LEMON TREE
Photograph 120 x 160 cm 2008 Inspired by the bucolic surroundings of the Black Forest, the MAGIC TREE® air freshener brand has been the No.1 choice for consumers across the world for over 50 years. The distinctive Tree, a wide range of authentic, lasting fragrances to suit every occasion and consistent new product development ensure that MAGIC TREE® air fresheners maintain their leadership position. Their quality and easy use contribute to the well-being of the consumer. MOLLY
Photograph 62 x 80 cm 2009 With Homer, Penelope waits patiently for the return of Ulysses. After ten years of solitude married to Leopold Bloom, Molly, on the other hand, yields to her suitors. James Joyce offers her the last pages of his novel. Her voice resonates in this final unpunctuated chapter in a long stream of consciousness known as Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy. My grand-father took great pleasure reading that last chapter to me when I was just a kid. PENELOPE
Photograph 90 x 120 cm 2015 HOTEL # 1
Photograph 85 x 125 cm 2016 HOTEL # 2 Photograph 85 x 125 cm 2016 ORIGINE Standard museum crate for a painting without frame of 46,3 x 2 x 55,4 cm. 60 x 15 x 71 cm 2014 This crate is customized for a particular painting. It is L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), an oil-on-canvas by Gustave Courbet. It was painted in 1866 but was introduced to the public for the first time in 1988. The commission for L’Origine du monde is believed to have come from a Turkish diplomat for his personal collection of erotic pictures. Then it was acquired by an antique dealer and sold to a Hungarian collector who took it with him to Budapest. The last owner was the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A double bottom frame was built and another picture was painted thereon. In 1995 it entered the collection of the Musée d’Orsay. GHOST SHELLS Light box plinth with lit top, 4 silicone molds, 2 polyester castings 60 x 50 x 120 cm 2014 Little boy, Pascal Bircher was hiking in the mountains. He picked up a characterless stone and threw it on a rock. The stone broke in two and revealed the fossil of a seashell and its imprint. What is presented here are the molds and castings of those two parts, themselves mold and casting. SOMETIMES, EVERYTHING IS ON THE SURFACE Bucket excavator, water 110 x 90 x 80 cm 2006 UNTITLED (MY LITTLE DOOR TO HELL)
HD video 00:11:33 looped 2010 Still shot: In a field, in the middle of the night, a car’s headlights switch on and a man gets out and digs a hole. He then sets fire to it with petrol and a match. He leans against the car and watches the fire burn out, goes back into the car and switches the headlights off. ENCORE HD video, 00:46:00 and photograph 100 x 150 cm 2011 Still shot of an inversed dawn in a field wherein lie the invisible and subterranean remains of a Gallo-Roman theatre, in Tarquimpol, in the French region of Lorraine. In relation to the archaeological blueprints, the camera is situated on the front stage, facing the hemicycle, in other words the viewers. ASHES
Pencil on paper 70 x 65 cm 2021 A place that my mother (at the time) wanted me spread her ashes. It's still one of her favorite place to go for a walk in the winter, close to where she lives. PLACENTA Birdcage and axe on white sheet 1995 NOVOS SEMIDEUSES E DEMÔNIOS ILEGAIS
Foamex prints 200 x 100 cm 2021 - ongoing The process for this ongoing project consists in (illegally) downloading super-hero movies up to 80% and then screen capturing the most abstract glitches due to the incompleteness of the download and printing them in landscape format. These American Übermensch movies have become in recent years visually baroque, overflowing with computer-generated imagery that seem to be constantly on the verge of abstraction, echoing the sensory overload that is one of neoliberalism’s side effects. The choice of having the title in Portuguese (In English: Illegal New Demigods and Demons) stems from the historical fact that the Portuguese Empire was the first global and one of the longest-lived empires in history. American imperialism is on the other hand far more recent but it’s cultural output is consumed globally and permeates a significant part of our reference systems, consciously or not. The process and final prints are a way of subverting these mass-consumed, expensive movies through an unharmful form of illegal activity which if we are to consider neoliberalism as an abstraction and abstraction as something which does not stem from any external visual reality, this is what is at the core of this project. For a closer look at some of these images click on the SEMIDEUSES page on the menu above. SCARCRASH Aluminium prints Dimensions variable 2022 - ongoing ScarCrash consists of images of crashed cars manipulated into various degrees of abstraction by multiple horizontal and vertical axes of symmetry. For a closer look at some of these images click on the SCARCRASH page on the menu above. GHOST
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