Op Op Art
by François Lancien Guilberteau, 2024
https://www.fondation-pernod-ricard.com/fr/expo/all-messages-are-emotional
Paintings have always had a dark side. This hidden face contains everything that has been deliberately excluded from the sensitive experience offered to viewers, but that influences them imperceptibly. Yet today we are living according to the rule of primacy of images, in which the pictorial experience is subordinated to that of its photographic reproduction, and in which the hidden dimension—the part that cannot be abstracted into bits and pixels—is reduced to a metadata that is lost as reproductions multiply. The more ready-made forms of life promoted by social networks are imposed on us, the more this dimension shrinks and withers, becoming the negligeable part of existence. The images we live by do not represent the world, but are the expression of the programme contained in the camera. Painting, in the current conditions, amounts to derailing the logic of reification, by causing something to happen that was not preordained by the programme.
Charlotte Houette’s most recent paintings have pop-up systems at their core, similar to the ones in animated books. Built into the very structure of the painting, they appear through a cut made in the canvas, they have several typologies, each suggesting a different movement or mode of apparition: a sliding panel, enabling a figure to move along a vector; a system of encased strips activated by a sideways motion, causing them to appear or disappear from images in the background; a diaphragm, the same as that of a camera, which opens and closes on spaces situated outside the scene. In pop-up books, these systems make readers the operators of a world that they contribute to animating, depending on a number of predetermined possibilities, a bit like a primitive form of video game. However, in Charlotte’s paintings, there are no cardboard flaps, little ties, or serrated disks offered to viewers to activate the mobile parts. Since any possibility of interaction is denied to them, the experience remains suspended between playful and pictorial. The physical encounter with the artwork only constitutes a brief moment in a sequence whose totality escapes the viewers, compromising the simultaneity ofthe pictorial experience with its photographic reproduction. Ultimately, it is perhaps the painting itself that is playing, exploring all possible combinations options in the chain of image distribution.
“Vision”, explains psychologist Rudolf Arnheim inThe Responsive Eye (1966), BrianDe Palma’s documentary on Op Art, “is based on discrimination, on the distinction between things which are different from each other. If you put the human mind in a
situation in which distinction is no longer there…” He points to the parallel lines on aBridget Riley painting, which contract in an undulating movement: “Then the eye jumps the track, you jump from one groove to the other.”Charlotte uses and abuses this Op Art characteristic, combining vectorial files found in the optical illusions section of a rights-free illustration library. All of this bi-dimensional imagery made of grids, targets, and pictograms is distorted onPhotoshop, as though passed through a machine for stretching taffy, before being reproduced on the canvas using stencils and an ultra-matte paint resembling plastic.The colour, which seems to obey a weird chromatic system only producing synaesthetic responses, gives the impression of being separated from its support. It stops being a property of the object to become a thing in itself.Charlotte models a paranoid space, where 2D forms torn from their original plan, distorted like the “fleeting-improvised-men” 1 described by Daniel Paul Schreber in his Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903), are sucked towards holes whose presence can only be deduced through the disturbance that they produce in the visual field.
The film Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) is introduced by a scene of conjugal intimacy, in which a couple entwined on a bed—played by Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike—seem to be delaying the moment of getting up by tacitly allowing themselves a tender moment. The shot is filmed from the man’s point of view. On his chest lies his wife’s head, with only the back of her hair appearing onscreen. As he strokes her hair, he pronounces in voiceover: “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers.” 2 As though he had inadvertently said these words aloud, the wife turns her head and stares into his eyes—which are simultaneously ours—with an expression foreshadowing the persecutions that she will inflict upon him throughout the film. The character of the man is incapable of imagining the dimensions of his wife that are inaccessible to him, other than through a morbid fantasy in which all of his dark side is illuminated. This denial of interiority is also imposed on him, as evidenced by the fact that he seems unable to stop expressing his own thoughts aloud.
It is against this kind of idolatrous spectator, a term which, according to philosopher Vilém Flusser’s, defines the person who cannot “read off ideas from the elements of the image, despite the ability to read these elements themselves” 3 that Charlotte deploys her retinal sadism. She designs optical toys for them that constantly cause the eye to jump from one instance to the other, successively drawing on its multiple functions: scanning the surface, finding relationships, distinguishing form from content, or the limits of the object. These sequences of contradictory stimulations, like thistles laid on the viewer’s cosy armchair, make the comfort and restfulness of a unified visual experience impossible. But above all, they aim to create conditions for the emergence of new ways of seeing, that do not pre-exist in any programme. By reintegrating the viewer into the influence of the hidden part of the painting, Charlotte ultimately seems to be seeking to reconnect with them.
Painting is the product of elective affinities that an artist maintains with materials, actions, subjects, and people, whether dead or alive. Painting is therefore essentially an act of love. But even before it is expressed, this love is stymied by a dilemma.Must it alter its nature, so that it can be expressed according to the constraints inherent to images? Or, on the contrary, must it remain authentic, even if it means condemning itself to insignificance in today’s economy of the gaze? The dual constraint that is now imposed on the painter recalls the one that tormented thespurned lover described by Roland Barthes in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, in the chapter entitled “Dark Glasses”: “To impose upon my passion the mask of discretion[…]: this is a strictly heroic value. […] Yet to hide a passion totally […] is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too week, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen […]: I set a mask upon mypassion, but with a discreet (and wily) finger I designate this mask.” 4
1 Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, trans. Ida Macalpine andRichard A. Hunter (Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 110.
2 David Fincher, Gone Girl, Regency Entreprises and TSG Entertainment, UnitedStates, 2014.
3 Vilém Flusser, Towards A Philosophy of Photography (London: Reaktion Books,2000), 83.4 Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (NewYork: Hill and Wang, 1978), 42-43.
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Op Op Art
Les peintures ont toujours une part d’ombre. Cette face cachée contient tout ce qui aété volontairement exclu de l’expérience sensible proposée al spectateur·ice, mais qui l’influence de façon imperceptible.Nous vivons néanmoins selon la règle de la primauté de l’image, où l’expérience picturale est subordonnée à celle de sa reproduction photographique, etoù la dimension cachée – celle qui ne peut s’abstraire en bits et en pixels – est réduite à une métadonnée qui se perd au gré des reproductions. Plus s’imposent à nous les formes de vie ready-made promues par les réseaux sociaux, plus cette dimension rétrécit, s’appauvrit, pour devenir la part négligeable de l’existence. Les images en fonction desquelles nous vivons ne représentent pas le monde, mais sont l’expression du programme contenu dans l’appareil photo. Peindre, dans les conditions actuelles, revient à faire dérailler la logique de la réification, en faisant advenir quelque chose qui n’était pas écrit dans le programme.
Les peintures les plus récentes de Charlotte Houette disposent en leur centre de systèmes de pop-up similaires à ceux que l’on trouve dans les livres animés.Construits à même la structure du tableau et rendus visibles par une percée effectuée dans la toile, ils se présentent sous plusieurs typologies suggérant chacune un mouvement ou un mode d’apparition différent : un panneau coulissant, permettant à une figure de se déplacer le long d’un vecteur ; un mécanisme constitué de lamelles enchâssées qui s’actionne par translation pour faire apparaître ou disparaître des images dans l’arrière-plan ; un diaphragme, pareil à celui d’un appareil photo, qui s’ouvre et se referme sur des espaces situés à l’extérieur de la scène. Dans les albums pop-up, ces dispositifs font des lecteur·ices les opérateur·ices d’un univers qu’iels contribuent à animer selon un nombre de possibilités déterminées à l’avance, un peu comme une forme primitive de jeu vidéo. Cependant, dans les peintures de Charlotte, aucune languette en carton, cordelette, ou disque cranté n’est proposé al spectateur·ice pour actionner les parties mobiles. Toute possibilité d’interaction lui étant refusée, iel demeure suspendu·e entre expérience ludique et picturale. La rencontre physique avec l’œuvre ne constitue qu’un instant d’une séquence dont la totalité lui échappe, compromettant la simultanéité de l’expérience picturale avec sa reproduction photographique. En fin de compte, c’est peut être la peinture elle-même qui joue, explorant les possibilités combinatoires de la chaîne de distribution des images.
« La vision, explique le psychologue Rudolf Arnheim dans The Responsive Eye(1966), le documentaire de Brian De Palma sur l’Op Art, est basée sur la discrimination, sur la distinction des choses selon leurs différences. Si l’on place l’esprit humain dans une situation dans laquelle cette distinction disparaît… » Il montre du doigt les lignes parallèles d’un tableau de Bridget Riley, qui se contractent dans un mouvement d’ondulation : « Alors l’œil saute d’un rail à l’autre. »Charlotte use et abuse de cette caractéristique de l’Op Art, en combinant des fichiers vectoriels récupérés dans la rubrique « Illusions d’optique » d’une bibliothèque d’illustrations libres de droits. Toute cette imagerie bidimensionnelle faite de grilles, de cibles et de pictogrammes est distordue sur Photoshop, comme passée à la machine à étirer la guimauve, avant d’être reproduite sur la toile à l’aide de pochoirs et d’une peinture ultra-mate ayant l’aspect du plastique. La couleur, qui semble obéir à un système chromatique bizarre ne produisant que des réponses synesthésiques, donne l’impression qu’elle se sépare de son support. Elle cesse d’être une propriété de l’objet pour devenir une chose en soi.Charlotte modélise un espace paranoïaque où des formes en 2D arrachées àleur plan d’origine, distordues comme les « images d’hommes bâclées 1 » décrites parDaniel Paul Schreber dans ses Mémoires d’un névropathe (1903), sont aspirées vers des trous dont on ne peut déduire la présence que par la perturbation qu’ils produisent dans le champ visuel.Le film Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) est introduit par une scène d’intimité conjugale, où un couple enlacé sur un lit – incarné par Ben Affleck et Rosamund Pike – semble retarder le moment du lever en s’accordant silencieusement un moment de tendresse. Le plan est filmé du point de vue de l’homme. Sur son torse repose la tête de sa femme, dont n’apparaît à l’écran que l’arrière de la chevelure.Tout en lui caressant les cheveux, il dit en voix off : « Quand je pense à ma femme, je pense toujours à sa tête. Je m’imagine en train de fendre son adorable crâne et de dérouler son cerveau dans l’espoir de trouver des réponses. 2 » Comme s’il avait sans s’en rendre compte prononcé ces mots à haute voix, la femme tourne alors la tête et plonge son regard dans le sien – qui est simultanément le nôtre –, avec une expression annonçant les persécutions qu’elle va lui infliger tout au long du film. Le personnage de l’homme est incapable d’envisager les dimensions de sa femme qui lui sont inaccessibles autrement que par le biais d’un fantasme morbide où l’intégralité de sa part d’ombre est mise en lumière. Ce déni d’intériorité s’impose également à lui, comme en témoigne le fait qu’il ne semble pouvoir s’empêcher de rendre audibles ses propres pensées.
C’est à l’encontre de ce type de spectateur·ice idolâtre, terme qui définit, pour le philosophe Vilém Flusser, la personne privée de « la faculté de lire des représentations dans les éléments de l’image, en dépit de [sa] faculté de lire ces derniers 3 », que Charlotte déploie son sadisme rétinien. Elle conçoit pour ly des jouets optiques qui font sans cesse sauter l’œil d’une instance à l’autre, en le sollicitant successivement dans ses multiples fonctions : scanner la surface, trouverdes relations, distinguer la forme du fond ou les limites de l’objet. Ces séquences de stimulations contradictoires, comme des chardons déposés sur le bon fauteuil del spectateur·ice, rendent impossibles le confort et le repos d’une expérience visuelle unifiée. Mais elles visent avant tout à créer des conditions d’émergence pour de nouvelles façons de voir, qui ne préexistent dans aucun programme. Charlotte, enréintégrant le·a spectateur·ice dans l’influence de la part cachée de la peinture, semble finalement chercher à renouer avec ly.
Une peinture est le produit des affinités électives qu’entretient un·e artiste avec des matériaux, des gestes, des sujets et des personnes, mortes ou vivantes. Peindre est donc essentiellement un acte amoureux. Mais avant même qu’il ne s’exprime, cet amour est retenu par un dilemme. Doit-il altérer sa nature, afin qu’il s’exprime selon les contraintes propres à l’image ? Ou faut-il au contraire qu’il reste authentique, quitte à se condamner à l’insignifiance dans l’économie actuelle du regard ? La double contrainte qui s’impose aujourd’hui al peintre rappelle celle qui tourmentait l’amant·e délaissé·e décrit·e par Roland Barthes dans les Fragments d’un discours amoureux, au chapitre intitulé « Les lunettes noires » : « Imposer à ma passion le masque de la discrétion […] : c’est là une valeur proprement héroïque […]Cependant, cacher totalement une passion […] est inconcevable : non parce que le sujet humain est trop faible, mais parce que la passion est, d’essence, faite pour être vue : il faut que cacher se voie […] je metsun masque sur ma passion, mais d’un doigt discret (et retors) je désigne ce masque. 4 »
1 Daniel Paul Schreber, Mémoires d’un névropathe, Seuil, 1975, p. 99.2 David Fincher, Gone Girl, Regency Entreprises et TSG Entertainment, États-Unis,2014.3 Vilém Flusser, Pour une philosophie de la photographie, Circé, 1996, p. 116.4 Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Points, 2020 [Seuil, 1977],pp. 62-63.
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Magic Colour, by Adam Stamp, 2024
New Low is pleased to present Magic Colour, an exhibition of new works by Charlotte Houette.
For many years, Houette’s wall works have featured a window, a door, a portal, or a passageway. I always read this as some joke about painting, a sort of in-your-faceness about “creating worlds,” as opposed to responding to a real world, as photography and sculpture tend to do. Yet when I first encountered the work, I didn’t even consider them paintings, rather they were sculptures that hung on the wall – dollhouse parts, excavation remains, habitat for humanity supplies.
But over the last years, Houette has gone all-in on painting. Ever a contrarian, Houette’s commitment to painting appears as neither figurative nor expressionistic abstraction, but instead as hard-edged, psychedelic, geometric abstraction (read as: Op-Art). Where once a literal window might have appeared in her wall-hung rectangles, now a panel, akin to a children’s book, sits where moveable slats reveal another image, or pattern, or colour combination through this created interior space. In terms of a kinship with kids’ stuff, wonder remains, but naivité does not – they’re eerie, pointed, and often (literally) pretty twisted.
For this latest, and potentially last series of the moveable panel paintings, Houette has given us five of the trippiest, most super-charged, fluorescent works to date. But rather than day-glo, the colours are actually inspired by Magic Changing Markers (Hamley’s brand, specifically), a novelty art making medium for children, where a “magic”, “white” marker changes the shade of the original markers’ pigments. Similarly, Houette’s central panels of canvas also change, albeit mechanically, but maintaining a magic in their own making. Eschewing expectations, these works’ “windows” are also the first non-rectilinear ones to feature in the work, adding another layer of bizarro perspective, à la Hanna Barbera. The result is poppy, pleasing, jarring and potentially nauseating.
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Texte by Sabrina Tarasoff for Unbirthday at High Art, 2023
Here we are, little kitty-cats, sinking our teeth into some Funfetti that’s supposed to topple, and so overturn our selves into the psy-fi of the mind’s math-land. Parched, we’re out to sip from bowls of spiritual milk, but have misplaced our spoons. Commence a search. That is, traipse through the Looking Glass, straight into Charlotte Houette’s many mini-mirror mazes. Finding the spoon in Time is of essence, as energy rations deplete in the night. Half-believe it true. Once inside, we’ll be immersed into the unreal space of non-orientable surfaces, where limits are known to shift, and secrets are cached into the penumbra of projective planes. Pay close attention to puzzles and charms. Make sure to not fall off the edges. Allow particularly lustrous points to surprise with added dimension. The entire Milky Way is here bottled in a two-dimensional manifold with no boundaries. Kittens of all kinds meow ineffables from somewhere unseen inside the galactic milk, from inside the milk within them. Hear them purring pleasantries to passing star-trekkers, like, mionjour miaoudemoiselle. Try not to stagnate. Thirst-Quest onward through twisting topographies, intricate traps, and differential lines. If you fail to fit, try snacking your way through space-time on small bits of unbirthday cake. Each slice creates crummy wormholes, little bite-sized singularities, that pebble the path, and swallow all selves. Like so, you can toon into your inner Alice, and approach the cartoon quantum. Feel your cels descaling towards the infinitesimal to get through locked gates. These treats are laced with secrets on loan from calculus, and some clues on erratic paths. ‘Shrooms restore and reduce. Approaching an end, an edge, in the abstraction of the mind or its maths, that is, in the absence of rhyme or reason, is one function of value to be approached with admonition: “Keep your temper,” says the Caterpillar. Or, else? Or: experience ego-death as ossified reality gives way to ever-diminishing returns; the prime concern is whether the limit will be hit. ‘For it might end, you know,’ Alice sobs, ‘in my going out altogether.’ To survive the trip, then, and keep your cool, act like a geometer: keep your ratios constant, at whatever scale. Absolute magnitude does not matter. That is, temper, you should do well to remember, is the degree in which the qualities in a surface, like hardness and elasticity, real and unreal, birthdays and unbirthdays, are intermingled. The trick is getting the concoction just right. Search the galactic railroad for a glass to temper for your milk, and something will be spoon-fed to you. Or, simply blow out your Unbirthday Candle, and wish your way out. Trapdoors and staircases lead back through the mirror. Railroads cross the galactic dark to check out the cool universe, then take you home. Tiny, coarse kitten-licks will unlock the secrets of the universe, in its scales and arpeggios. Spoons are forever lost into the mystery, but no matter. Like a Flatland Romance, the point is to trip through dimensions, questing, snacking, seeking substance.
↠ Mousse Magazine 63- April 2018 – Ghost Stories of almost Nobody by Sabrina Tarasoff