Les êtres et les objets se perforent

Les êtres et les objets se perforent gathers major works by the artist, from his first exhibitions to his most recent pieces.
The essay by Lionnel Gras, art historian and curator, offers several transversal movements which act as doors to comprehend the wealth of Simon Nicaise's work. The detailed analysis puts into perspective the key notions in his oeuvre: construction, gesture, event, accident, entropy, system, fiction, and even appropriation. The author shows and expands the aesthetic questions which underlie the artist's practice, using images and analytical tools as diverse as they are unexpected. Her approach is naturally enriched by the memory of regular conversations shared with the artist and a constant interest in his work. As the text unfolds, melodies punctuate the critical thought.

“The artist's elected territory wavers between apparently rival registers: ingenuous naivety, “poésie fleur bleue” (sentimental and romantic poetry), and tragic machination. Sometimes poetry mingles with the trivial and usual daily round, with what is devalued, with the grotesque, with farce, and with schoolboy humour. Incoherence and absurdity give rise just as much to anti-heroic and modest actions (sweeping, for example) as to Promethean-like gestures (making the impossible stand up). With Simon Nicaise, snow is kept in the deep freeze, the first stone is laid on a vulgar wall made of cemented breeze-blocks, and the noise of the sea is delivered to us with the help of a standard industrial amplifier. The at times antagonistic comparison of objects leads to the introduction of another cognitive and visual relation to reality, like a new lucidity, perhaps.”
Lionnel Gras