With Marie and William, Alex Cecchetti attempts to transpose the performative gesture in the space of the book.
Alex Cecchetti knows that “a story is an object, but one that does not take any space for storage, or not as much as a painting or a sculpture.” Indeed, the story of Marie and William, a performance by the artist, assumes the shape of a book. The content—photography, drawings, and captions—is stylishly arranged on the pages, visually akin to a collage—scanned, not 3D-printed. The story is rendered flat, but like so many stories captured in surfaces, it deals with movement. “Think of a dance manual, or a script made of stills. In fact, does not even know it is a book, it thinks itself to be a record on a turn table.”
Marie and William: A Performance by Alex Cecchetti is part of MIDI, an imprint of Mousse Publishing initiated by Åbäke.
Artist, poet and choreographer, creator of performances and idiosyncratic objects, Alex Cecchetti (born 1977 in Terni, Italy, lives and works in Paris) has developed a unique practice, difficult to classify, that could be called art of avoidance: tactical and poetic, aesthetic and materialistic, its system leads to produce specific situations or objects that can exist both inside and outside the traditional exhibitions. It is in this double movement of representation and conceal that it's possible to inscribe his staging of invisible choreographies of hidden nudes and sleeping dancers. His work is focused in the construction of specific narratives that are experienced both mentally and physically by the audience.
