Bn PROJECTS - Maison GREGOIRE

MONDAY IS BLUE by Edith DEKYNDT

Found in Translation, chapter E

Monday is blue
By
Edith DEKYNDT

« Green noise is the background noise produced by the Earth.â€

Bn PROJECTS and Maison Grégoire are particularly proud to invite you to the opening of Monday is blue, a site specific project by Edith Dekyndt (www.edithdekyndt.be), conceived and developed for the recently renovated space of Maison Grégoire.
This exhibition is also part of the ongoing series of Found in Translation shows, initiated by Bn PROJECTS since 2010 (e.g. : http://www.casino-luxembourg.lu/content_en.htm).

The very title of Monday is blue might evoke for some of our English-speaking readers the creative world of a W. Shelley, or more recently and in a different genre, the likes of Fat Dominos, New Order or The Cure. The French speakers will more immediately associate the expression to the spirit pervading the universe of a Rimbaud or a Paul Eluard .

Beyond, the very principle of the metaphor raises some issues such as the relativity of our sensorial perceptions and of their translated representations, whilst also suggesting secret relationships from the one sense to the other. There we come on the vast ground of synaesthesiae, dear to many a symbolist poet, but also continuously investigated by science, from Newton to contemporary neuroscience, whose investigations seem to comfort the idea of possible neurological connections between the relevant specialized cortical areas

It is in a way quite logical that Edith Dekyndt, whose liminal oeuvre, oscillating between visible and invisible, between subjective and objective, often stems from—and relies on—scientific knowledge and discourse, thereby infiltrating an intangible world where science and knowledge indirectly address issues that concern us all, directed her latest research in this direction.

For Maison Grégoire, (and beyond any restrictive limitation to the musical field), Edith Dekyndt’s investigations explore the existing correspondances between colours and sounds. These relationships, revealed by correspondences in terminology (does not one naturally speak of chromatism in the musical field ?) was inter alios pioneered by Isaac Newton. Newton, driven by a concern for the unification of the different areas of human knowledge and representations of the physical world, tried to establish a correspondence between the wave lengths of the seven notes of our musical language with the vibrations exerted on our « optical nerve » by light, which he arbitrarily decomposed into 7 « primary  » colours. Although he ultimately failed to scientifically prove his point, his intuition, constantly re-elaborated and precised, kept influencing the subsequent investigations in the field, whilst also producing the odd by-products such as the « colour organ  » of a Bainbridge Bishop.

The very object and distinctive site-specific articulations of Edith Dekyndt’s project (consisting of prints, book, projection) will be in a sharp contrast with the domestic, homely character of Maison Grégoire, located in a residential suburb of the Belgian capital, as much as it will address in a subvertive way the specific character of this pearl of modernist archictecture by Van de velde, naturally devoted to the circulation of light.

Emmanuel Lambion

Opening on 22 March 2012, 6 30 p.m.

Exhibition open on Saturdays, 2-6 P.M., from 24 / 03 / 2012 till 28 / 04 / 2012

Special viewings on the occasion of Art Brussels,
on 19 et 20 / 04, 6 - 9 p.m.,
21/ 04, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

L’Observatoire- Maison Grégoire
292 Dieweg
B 1180 Bruxelles
www.maisongregoire.be