Mécanofolie



Museum
of Sarreguemines
Email

Tourist Information
Center of Sarreguemines
Email
    EXHiBITION : Mécanofolie
    From 18 February to 24 April 2000

    At the Faience Museum of Sarreguemines
    Jardin d'Hiver de Paul de Geiger
    17 Rue Poincaré - F 57200 Sarreguemines - Tel: 03 87 98 93 50
    Opening Hours: 10 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. - Every day except Tuesdays

    At the Museum of Faience Techniques of Sarreguemines
    Moulin de la Blies
    125 Avenue de la Blies - F 57200 Sarreguemines - Tel: 03 87 98 93 50
    Opening Hours: 10 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. - Every day except Tuesdays


Contents :
Madly Mechanical in Sarreguemines

Jean Fontaine, a ceramist sculptor who is well known in the ceramic art world, is back in Sarreguemines.

After "Terres du Fantastique" and "Zoofolie", he will be presenting his new travelling exhibition "Mécanofolie" from 18 February to 24 April 2000.

The world of this sculptor is inhabited by hybrid creatures with suggestive names, such as "Métaphoreuse", "Cyclotron" and "Viole de Gambettes".
An intricate tangle of bodies, animals and heavy mechanical parts, his ceramic chimera blend life and machinery, with humour, perspiration and engine grease. These astonishing creatures disclose a phantasmagoric world and illustrate a mythology of the future.
Photos : J-P Eschmann
 The artist shows us his dream version of a world where the borderline between man and his creation merges to the point of pushing its definition to extraordinary limits.

This surgeon-ceramist often starts with casts of mechanical pieces (nuts and bolts, crankshafts, connecting rods, etc.), to which he adds his own creations inspired by the human body.

This hardware takes the shape of surprising human beings, but perhaps they are really breathing machines?
The human ironmongery that emerges before the eyes of visitors is part of the the universe of a Captain Nemo straight out of the imagination of Jules Verne. After Sarreguemines, the exhibition "Mécanofolie" will leave France for England, and more precisely Manchester.


Exhibition "Mécanofolie"
Museum of Faience and Museum of Faience Techniques
of Sarreguemines, and various parts of the town ...
from 18 February to 24 April 2000.

Open every day except Tuesdays
from 10 a.m. to noon and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The visit to the exhibition is included in the museum entry ticket
























"Mécanofolie" in Sarreguemines
Mécanofolie
Postcript

Mécanofolie

Mechanics is reason in movement. Madness is also reason in movement. However, mechanics runs smoothly, it is precise, clear and efficient, while madness is unruly, confused, futile and jammed.

Mechanics is composed of iron, cogwheels, belts and pistons. Madness, on the other hand, is human, it is made of passions, neurons and fears. To be mad is to have a screw loose, to be off one's nut, to be unhinged, unsound and unbalanced; it also means blowing one's mind and having to undergo electric shock treatment.

Mechanics is cold, linear, objective, and it is even compatible with electricity. Mechanics functions because intelligence was able to design and concoct subtle machines. Madness occurs because the brain fails and breaks down.
The sculptor Jean Fontaine switches on this perverse system which sets reason and madness in motion. The human body is a skeleton, it has bones, muscles, nerves and a brain, and it works according to a logic similar to mechanics.
Sometimes arteries need to be unblocked, the body has to be injected or put on a drip, parts of it stitched up or set in plaster. Jean Fontaine practises the science of transplanting. He removes a bit here to replace a bit there. As a surgeon-ceramist, he grafts cogwheels - valves, pawls, condensers, rocker arms, cylinders - and then proceeds to rivet, weld, bolt, join, attach or link them together, to couple them with human parts. From these coitions are born works brought forth in engine grease, and they are immediately coated in the glistening blackness of oil-polished metal.

Photos : J-P Eschmann
 Yet in these hybrids - mechanical oddities, mad machines, eccentric techniques - all is supremely logical and rational.

They could work, and in any case they certainly take us for a ride. Thanks to his sleight of hand, the ceramist Jean Fontaine conjures up one trompe-l'oeil after another. He plays with shapes like writers play with words.

And what is more, he indulges in the pleasure of tinkering with the titles of his works, in keeping with his teasing approach. For Fontaine makes it clear that too much reasoning can actually accentuate the absurd.
Machines which are too perfect prove the deficiency of homo sapiens, since human beings are inevitably imperfect, impulsive, distracted and fragile. In the same way, totally homogeneous States are obliged to discard the individual, this small egocentric, recalcitrant and idle cogwheel.

In the face of such total-techniques, even God becomes just an old bearded man, barely able to supervise the mechanics of the sky and apply his oilcan to lubricate the cogwheels of the earth.

And this is how forewords lose their postscripts, because a typewriter is not always available to write prefaces or, better still, pre-farces.

Michel Froidevaux, the Curator-Mechanic of Mécanofolie















"Mécanofolie" in Sarreguemines
Mécanofolie
 Postcript


Postscript ...

The exhibition "Mécanofolie" is composed of nearly forty sculptures which will be exhibited in the two Museums of Sarreguemines, and also in the four corners of the capital of Faience.

All the pieces on display have humorous names devised by the fertile imagination of their creator. Unfortunately, translating the titles into English would mean losing their witty play on words.

Archimède Fleur d’hélice Mister swing
Au feu I French carcan Muse muselée
Au feu II Gémeaux descendant diesel Constriction métallique
Brune filtre L’enclumé Pétoman
Casse pied (2 exemplaires) L’hélice du désir Pied de guerre
Coitus interruplus Les ailes du plaisir Pipiranha II
Corps encore Miss Unifer Pliée en deux
Cranibalisme Les lumières de la Vie Poële à femme
Cyclotron Transport amoureux Lolo Bugatti Scie charmante et si cruelle
Electro-amant Mâle dans sa peau Temps et tant d’amour
En attendant le prince charmant Mécanique ta mère Viole de gambettes
Entre vis et vertu Métaphoreuse




 

 | History | the Sarreguemines Faience Trail | Events & News | the Trip to Sarreguemines |
 | Museum of Faience Techniques | the Wintergarden of Paul de Geiger | 
| Where to see Sarreguemines Faience | Bookshop | 

HOME PAGE
 

© Sarreguemines Museum — Last updated Fri, Feb 11, 2000