The text Lonesome Navigator was written for the installation L’humeur, by artists Barbezat-Villetard part of Parallels, an exhibition held from 30 January to 18 December 2022 at CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel. The publication was released in 2025.
The CAN presented Parallels, an experience that considered the forms of the group exhibition. It unites about fifteen personal exhibitions. They come along together or follow each other in a long tangled program. The two spaces of the art centre are transformed into five different smaller rooms. The artists can therefore create their own world in a joint story which follows an arrhythmic movement. Parallels favors the multiple combinations of exhibitions, prevails entropy and encourages the dynamic of a permanent creative movement claimed by the CAN. Splited into three parts, as a cinematographic trilogy, it evokes a narrative universe that takes its source in science-fiction.
LONESOME NAVIGATOR
Here I am. As a hundred times before. And yet, there is something weird. Is it the reddish tint? The dark glowing texture of the tubular ceiling? Or the smell? That’s it. Diffuse. It carries the pungency of greasy scents rising from the depths. It is sickeningly sweet like the almost visible perfumed trail of an earlier passenger, which must have permeated the porous walls and stagnated in this cramped corridor.
Other presences reveal themselves slowly. I anticipate the steps coming behind, like wingbeats of low flying swallows, I see the rosy halo of the one ahead on the seat. I feel them like the gentle flow of a tropical breeze. As I move on, my slight mood-altering headache intensifies. Low pressure. Would the atmospheric agents play against me today? Saturated air. I inhale. A slight nausea surprises me. I spit out. The floor is slippery. Is it raining outside? A few beads trickle on my forehead. It sticks to my skin, the smell, the sensation, like a gluey mist that would infiltrates through my orifices to then spread and grow through my cells.
I lose my bearings. As if to better let myself be carried away by this score already started, that I constantly, unwillingly replay. It seems that all the existing visuals and sensory patterns are continuously reshuffled, my surroundings reframed. I extrapolate and let myself be transported by this soft manipulation. My diaphragm tightens. My pulse accelerates. Allegro. I rise.
SILHOUETTE
1565, Florence. Was Vasari really thinking of protecting the fragile nasal cavities of the Dukes and Duchesses from the foul, meaty miasma coming from the Ponte Vecchio when he conceived his corridor? Elevated, it boldly allowed the members of the Medici family to rise to the upper level while passing unnoticed from one Palace to another. A shortcut, a privileged path, a secret way, in and out. A corridor. In this element of domestic architecture one walks through, one rushes, from A to B; one does not stay still in a corridor. No wonder that it carries the name of “the one who runs”.
2022, Neuchâtel. The alley I’m facing now is 14m long. How long would it take me to cover this distance with 86 pulsations per minute? How many steps would I need to catch up with this silhouette, that I vaguely distinguish at the other end of the hallway? I can hardly identify it as a human figure but I hear a breath, slightly panting, mingling with the dripping of the pipes and my own cadence, as if to form a common acoustic matter. Andante. The figure moves forward with allure, a swiftness without hesitation, as it seems to slips through the obstacles in its way. It is about to climb. I can’t see its face but it guides me. I recall the obscure walkers in Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989), plunging the observer in a sort of never ending opening credits. I follow the oracle.
The roaming silhouette acts as a vector of speculated futures, of the darkest fantasies, of myriad conjectures. The gallery, vehicle for romanticized ventures and dreadful scenarios, is a place for expectations and reveals the attractive irrational and even delirious promises of our imagination. What’s happening at the end of the way? On the next level? On the other side of the gate?
SIDEREAL PRESENCE
Rue des Moulins 37. I remember an oculus that I had spotted before. It seemed to observe me as much as I observed it. As I glimpsed through and gazed into the exhibition space my vision was obstructed for a short moment by the dazzling icy sun rays. Thus, the narrow entry looked like a darkly lit underground path. I could barely determine the hue. “On en reste bleu, on voit rouge, on est vert“, they said.
I stepped in. The entrance hall opened on the vast distribution space of the CAN formed by a large communication routes network acting like the telescopic arms of the architecture. Reaching out, drawing in, connecting different realities, levels and states. They invited me to stay.
So I sat there, and the corridor became a hospitality area that allowed me to rest, in expectancy. Reflecting on the endless combinations of the waiting room’s amberlike modular structure, I realized that this corridic display was slowly shifting into a free-floating location that possessed a somewhat destabilizing, transitory quality. A vessel being nothing but a long maze-like airlock made of lanes and lobbies, gates and thresholds; it nevertheless had its own rules, an identity, and a weightlessness to be shared with its still-undetectable inhabitants.
Resting, waiting, cogitating. Lento. A haze thickened, becoming a bluish veil of auroral obscurity. I sat unaware that the changeover had already started. Recall Dr. Clair in J. G. Ballard’s Crystal World (1966) so mesmerized by the sinister beauty of the invasive quartzes that she surrenders physically to their spread. Like her, I lingered with pleasure in an addictive liminal state of semi-consciousness. I had not realized as I entered the sas, where referential and parallel universes meet, that I would be walking into a transition phase. The twitching of the neon lights woke me from my torpor and I saw it, the vibrating punctum, staring at me and gently pulling me out.
Barbezat-Villetard. The work of collaborative duo Barbezat-Villetard takes over physical – and mental –territories, arranging objects or setting up installations that temporarily graft themselves to the given space (...). The resolutely minimal, though sometimes radical, intervention by this Franco-Swiss duo is not intended to serve as a declaration of form. By reducing, extending and ablating shapes, sections, perspectives and volume, they create remote spaces, both real and imaginary. The duo deploys a geometric compendium reminiscent of the formal chemical and biological nomenclatures that allows them to play with the boundaries between the inside and outside, the visible and the invisible. In doing so, they offer the viewer a new perception of space, enabling him to truly modulate his environment. (...) The landscapes they redraw are as sweeping as they are untamed, as tiny as they are aseptic, and renders the, albeit fragile, perception of spacetime intervals possible.
The CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel is run by the non-profit association of the same name. It is made up of an office, a committee and ordinary members. The office is the executive body of the association. It is composed of artists, curators and technicians, responsible for the program and working collectively as an horizontal organization. The office shares the common tasks of the art center so as to meet the requirements for the production of contemporary art exhibits, as well as the public mediation. The artistic, technical, practical decisions and salaries, are made together.