Le Cercle Fermé

The installations of Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil, who have worked together since 2008, are always formulated in reaction to the places in which they are embedded, and question our perception of space. They deal with the heart of controlled spaces of the contemporary world of openings where illusion, imagination, instability and the illogical are combined. Le Cercle fermé thus takes as its starting point the architecture of Ca’ del Duca, a building dating from the 15th century, home of the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 1999. Is is composed of a series of rooms without any true right angles because of its age. Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil’s work is installed close to the Grand Canal and also responds to the context of Venice, which in many ways is an unreal and atemporal city. During the exhibition run, the artists also completely transform the Ca’ del Duca into a succession of illusionistic paintings, oscillating between the real and the unreal and playing on loss of bearings: straight becomes curved, the floor becomes confused with the ceiling and orientation is disturbed. The installation contains inert and deformed objects and appears frozen in time. It opens up a potential space at the heart of the existing space. The title of the installation translates the experience of the viewer on various levels: disoriented, like in a closed labyrinth, you also find yourself at the heart of the installation where you can project your own narrative.