Transflammation

Warming and burning are amongst the concepts and strategies Sarkis often incorporates into his works to generate different layers and meanings. Created by the artist in 1996 for the exhibition "Kunsten soger hjem" [Art at Home], organised at Ballerup, Egebjerp in Denmark, "Transflammation" is one of Sarkis’ works that employs such strategies.
The artists participating in the exhibition would realise and exhibit their works in the houses of Egebjerp with the permission and cooperation of the homes’ inhabitants. The first thing Sarkis noticed in the house of the family who had invited him and agreed to host his project was the discordancy of the furniture. To create harmony among these household items of different styles, Sarkis proposed a performance and film that would do away with their differences and create a sense of unity by fire. The film begins with an introduction to the house. The camera slowly explores the room, introducing the window, then the sofa, the coffee table, the sideboard, the lampshade around the corner… and, lastly, the table at which Sarkis worked for three days to depict all these pieces of furniture in watercolour. With Bach’s Cantata No. 127 playing in the background, Sarkis begins to paint over and burn the pieces of furniture with red watercolour. The film was shown on the TV in the same living room, and those who came to the house to watch it witnessed the burning of the furniture around them.
After the first presentation of "Transflammation" in Denmark, Sarkis reinterpreted the work, staging it for a second time as an installation at FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, in 2001. This time, the artist embarked from the as-yet-unborn forms of the furniture he had burnt in his watercolours. He first contemplated who and what might be necessary for a table to be born, or a chair, a sideboard, a coffee table, windows, or any other such object. Then, he asked a carpenter to draw up a list and measurements of the materials he would need to reproduce these pieces of furniture, to prepare and group together the timbers cut from a tree that had fallen in a storm, and to deliver them to him as unassembled materials. Then, he laid out these wooden pieces in a large circle and placed a monitor, rotating clockwise, in the very centre of them. While the film showed Sarkis setting the furniture on fire, the rotating monitor illuminated its as-yet-unborn forms.