Victor Pilars
JUNE 5th - JUNE 29th 2025
ETABLISSEMENT D’EN FACE
Victor
Pilars' humour
Here is the communication element accompanying Victor Pilars' exhibition ‘Untitled’. An A6 postcard featuring one of the works exhibited in A4 format. The layout differs from one to the other.
We have seen more exciting visuals and less common titles. But ultimately, perhaps they are characteristic of the unobvious humour of this particular exhibition, and of Victor Pilars' work in general.
Describing this humour is, moreover, an uncomfortable task. The first word that comes to mind is clownish. That is to say, the association of elements that are directly related to a given situation. A physical and verbal commitment that is both exaggerated and minimal. Something close to mime, tinged with melancholy. Outdated and contemporary.
The description of certain works may help to make this intuition more tangible.
The first one is a 30x40 cm lilac-coloured painting hanging on a pale yellow wall, the lower part of which is painted in a grey-green colour, framed by a skirting board of the same colour. Laziness would suggest that the combination of yellow and grey-green results in lilac. We quickly realise that this is not the case and, rather than finding the hypothesis absurd, we prefer to think that Victor Pilars is a mediocre painter or a complete fool. Then comes the title: ‘Quality’. We repeat it to ourselves, associate it with familiar qualities (Quality Street sweets and their dreadful mauve box, ‘The Man Without Qualities’, which we might read one day, or worse still: the quality controller) to the point where the word ends up being disgusting from being repeated so often. Like a human face that we stare at for too long, with exaggerated intensity.
The ‘Etablissement d'en face’, reproduced on the postcard, gives a similar impression. In addition to the hideous yellow highlighting, reminiscent of the traumatic use of word processing software, the paper itself seems to be in a sorry state. Stuck to a moulded door, there is a raised area right in the middle along its entire length (equivalent to the metal bar on a sofa bed). The worst place to hang a sheet of paper. The perversity is taken to the extreme with the use of crystal adhesive tape, almost invisible, an aesthetic refinement. Not content with tormenting this poor sheet of paper, V. Pilars has also ruined the name ‘Etablissement d'en face’ by means of imposed repetition. We are beginning to feel a sense of joy.
The running gag continues with the projection of a still image. The word FACE written in solemn, grey lettering. It appears to have been drawn by hand, coloured in pencil, then digitised. At scale 1? Projected onto an MDF board the same colour as the wall. An indecisive yellow. This FACE, or rather this face, impassive but projected like a film, a kind of faceless screen test, repeats itself endlessly. We would like to read something into it, but it says nothing. The closer we get, the less we see. The face-to-face encounter is constrained by the average resolution quality of the video projector. Are we finally witnessing the emergence of low fidelity, which Deutsche Bahn trains have accustomed us to in their low punctuality version?
In a small square room, two paintings face each other. The shape that identifies them is that of the front of a train seen in profile. Two trains, therefore, going round in circles like two idiots, each on its own track because they are hung at slightly different heights. This duo is accompanied by a few sentences on the exhibition leaflet:
"The forms that are shown refer to the front of a train, seen from the side. I started to think of trains as a carrier for people and their thoughts. And that the logo of the trains would be a reduction of their thoughts. One thought."
This gives us a clue as to the motivations behind these works. A thread of thought that leads to abstractions. We can assume that the other objects on display follow the same line of reasoning, although we know nothing about that. The idea of a train full of passengers whose thoughts are reduced to a single one, and that single thought abstracted into a logo, is frightening. Yet these two paintings seem quite harmless.
The last item on display is also harmless: ‘Background of internet advertising, screenshot’. A small rectangle with a dark green gradient, barely stuck to a white sheet of paper, barely attached to a thin piece of cardboard held in place by four pitiful nails. The whole thing is hung at a majestic height in relation to the bourgeois fireplace next to it.
But then, does the clownishness I mentioned earlier have anything to do with the common place of the installation? There is indeed a playfulness here in the relationship between the visitor's body and the works, all hung at different heights in a space that is not particularly welcoming to them. And, more than in the installation-form, the humour lies in the accuracy of the staircase hanging. What could have been dismissed as a facile gimmick takes on the more enigmatic aspect of a relevant choice. A successful accrochage, isn't that bizarre?
The repetition of words and gestures passes through very narrow channels in this rather open exhibition space. What could perhaps have been written is contorted here into a lilac-coloured painting. The uneasiness makes us laugh: at not being able to name with certainty what we see, at our own presence suddenly surrounded by a precise device.
Cyriaque Villemaux