Ange Leccia


 

Joseph Simas
"Face to face: Meeting the Art of Ange Leccia"
Arts Magazine, New York, été 1990
p. 48-50

The first thing many people do when they see a piece by Ange Leccia is to begin talking about something else (and I've seen other people turn and walk in the opposite direction rather than be caught in the same room with him). One of his first moves in the '70s in Corsica was to project the classical image of a Madonna against the white foam of incoming waves. As the night got darker the projected image became clearer. In the morning nothing was left but the waves... and the talk-both of which continue to this day.
Like an aphorism, Leccia's work derives from a concise and decisive, marking off of boundaries. As the reader of the aphorism confronts words cast out of thought by the author, the art of Leccia confronts its viewer with things cast from their usual intents and purposes. Many of these arranged objects function merely as something to point to, to talk about, to throw aside at the meeting between them becomes clearer; to see the props he uses leads us to find or recognize a band of shimmering light, a in hispieces with facing TVsets, cars, stagelights. The line between the objects is the "work," the means he uses are chosen to meet the ends (and art may be one of the few areas of human activity where the ends justify the means). But work may not be the most useful word here-it is a name I see first, names facing each other and a horizon, or horizons, inscribed onto every last detail of the arrangements from which his art comes-and departs.
Another word that comes to mind when I think about Ange Leccia's art is transport-to move from one place or person to another, and in another sense, to enrapture. His arrangements the early '80s transported filmed images of classical artworks projecting them onto gallery sets of beach pebbles or onto win dows, staircases, walls. In the mid-'80s, the images (of art) removed and Leccia used the light of film projectors or TV sets "to expose" (the French verb exposer means to exhibit as well to expose) stacks of cement bricks or packing boxes, or each other. In the late '80s Leccia placed computers, humidifiers radios, and TV sets around the column of boxes used to pack and transport them.
These arrangements-because they use the familiar objects of our commodity culture-have been mistaken as appropriated objects, rectified readymades of a sort, mere commodity art. A closer look shows that Leccia is hardly concerned with the object per se, but rather with its internal function (as opposed to its social or economic function, which I will discuss later). The passéiste, guilt-laden discourse on commodities is relegated to a column of empty boxes, while the interal circulation of the object signals a mirrored external movement, a transportation between the envelope or now-empty container and the thing itself. The circulation between the object and the box is repeated, as the consumer transports the item to yet another room or compartment. Rather than lamenting the fact of contemporary consumer practices, Leccia attempts to point to the internal mechanisms at make us produce and "consume" in the first place.
The line between production and consumption is the expenditure of energy that each activity sets into motion. The danger of consumer culture lies in the potential that there are those who do not produce while they consume and/or vice versa; it is an economic problem of balance. The formal symmetries in most of Leccia's work place the expenditure of energy at the center of each arrangement. Functions of transport, name-brands, light, are thereby equalized or canceled out and again one is left with the enigma of a horizon, or meeting point, between the two sources of energy, between the causes and their (desired) effects. The viewer-like the objects in the arrangements-is brought to a complete standstill. But it is a receptive standstill, one that faces an external sign-something other-which is the result of a symmetrical casting out or neutralization of purposes, functions, and interests.Formal symmetries place the expenditure of energy at the center of each arrangement.
The aspect of consumer goods (including service activities) that most interests Leccia is the name, brand name, or symbol of the object-paralleling the internal mechanism, that which circulates externally. In a recent work, for example, I Want What I Want (1988) Leccia arranges two Honda 750s back to back, in profile against the backdrop of six Seibu (a large Japanese department store) publicity posters depicting a young adolescent couple on the verge of kissing. The circular interplay between back to front, left to right, Honda and Seibu, boy and girl, face to face, white and black, human and machine, seduction and desire, etc., is all apparent-the names are all recognizable, all there-demystified, yet impossible to contain within any single discourse.
The simple French pronunciation of Leccia's literally angelic first name and the threatening Corsican ring of his family name are nearly enough by themselves to account for their presence in conversations on contemporary art in France and elsewhere. Art is, in part, a conversation, and there's no question that the simplicity of a name helps it to circulate freely-for better or worse in the confines of talk related to business, markets, and images, as any publicity agent or gallerist knows well. Whether one likes it or not, it is most often the name that allows the work to be seen and not the other way around. Leccia-like a number of his French contemporaries has made this knowledge part of his work. It's a form of cynicism, if you will, or lucidity, which he places in front of the simple naïveté of many of his arrangements. In France at least, attached to this artist's name is a man who is at the source of more rumors than anyone I know. Maybe this has something to do with his sulky "pretty boy" image-the earlyMarlon Brando type. Ange is a fake, a joker, a liar, a gossip, a mere publicist. He is powerful, ruthless, shrewd, and rich. He is polite, elegant, well-mannered, charming. He is a politician, a military strategist, a minimalist, a poor Italian immigrant, a classicist. In short, Leccia is not to be trusted, he is ambiguous, shady, a fly-by-night flash of artificial brilliance. All this and more, no doubt. Again the conversation carries us elsewhere.
Simplicity takes us in several directions at once. Two highwatt theatrical spotlights are arranged face to face, in "a kiss," revealing each other as they neutralize their usual expository functions. Two soccer goal nets are brought together to reduce the game to its purpose alone (here the horizon is pointed to by its absence). Speakers project sound into one another, parked cars stare their shining lights face to face, art transportation workers install kitchenware, movie projectors occupy the spectators' seats...
In much of his recent work, Leccia has turned away from local arrangements toward larger transports of things, persons, and places-larger social horizons. In the Paris Museum of Modern Art's recent exhibition Museum Histories, he placed 25 Gendarmerie motorcycles in a dark room lit only by their flashing blue turn signals: the street symbol of law and authority meets the governing institution of art in an otherwise empty museum cloister. At Valmy, in a grandiose celebration of the French bicentennial (where he was photographed with none other than the French President), Leccia occupied the position of the Prussian forces in 1792, staging a face-to-face encounter with spectators who watched and listened as helicopters, exploding bombs, and radio broadcasts re-created the threat of an offensive attack that never occurred. It was at Valmy that the Prussians surrendered to the impassioned forces of the French Revolution, a nearbattlesight which dates the independence of modern France.
It's unlikely that Ange Leccia will back down in the face of forces which, hardly impassioned these days, are wondering where to turn next-but he may return to an art of disappearing acts, as art lovers and critics continue looking to see where they can catch him. One of these acts consists of filling a plastic garbage bag with a hundred kilos of sugar, drenching the sugar in gasoline, and carefully, from a distance, setting fire to a wick that sets it off into a condensed, orange ball of rising fire, noise, and smoke punctuating the horizon. At this writing, Leccia's upcoming exhibition at the Magasin in Grenoble (May 19-August 27) will turn the site itself into a field of smoke that will alternately thicken 7 and dissipate as the viewer approaches the machines behind the clouds.
The variety of objects, materials, sites, and arrangements that Ange Leccia uses in his art all derive from a meeting in a given time and place between one line-of light, color, sound, thought, etc.-and another, who recognizes it-viewer, maker, and object alike. A more deceptively simple equation may not exist. His continual restaging of this meeting takes on many material forms but its essential effect is to shed light upon, to illuminate, the act of naming art, accepting it, affirming its apparent one could say classic-presence in our loves and lives however distant.
Beauty does not deny the intellect, nor the intellect beauty though many contemporary artists, critics, and art consumers: have a hard time accepting this, or betting on it. To draw the line on beauty may be useless but it surely is a gift, as both near and far horizons equally suggest.

Joseph Simas is a poet who lives and works in France. His most recent book is Kinderpart (Paradigm Press).