Anne Brégeaut 

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The exhibition Au pays du jamaisjamais (Never-never land) summons up childhood memories, or rather the reminiscences of a past-both near and very far-thatmeld with those of the adult mind. Yesterday, today and tomorrow corne together in art that is fun, sensitive and disturbing all at the

same time. We recognize icons of various generations, such as Peter Pan, Little Red Riding Hood and French children's Casimir. They represent an understated disillusionment, the end of our childish dreams. Anne Brégeaut draws on her own memories, and ours as well. An interplay of visual and

other sensory eues and memories arises in a mental labyrinth where she invites us to get lost. A silent sharing springs into being, and persona! constructions intertwine. With her phantasmagoric iconography and radiant palette she opens the doors to a precious treasure, an intimacy shared with candor and simplicity. She explores and interrogates a space somewhere in between where dichotomous relationships coexist  and are always active-for instance, between reality and fiction, dreams and nightmares, happiness and unease, conscious and unconscious. ln this ineffable and

unstable space, she sets off a series of shifts and impossibilities, or, on the contrary, an infinity of possibilities (La Mauvaise Direction-The

Wrong Direction). The brain is this exhibition's motif and emblematic subject. lt punctuates our visit as we fall into the meanders of a rich and jubilatory

contemplation. lt is variously shown on wheels and sprinkled with plastic pine trees, seen as a domestic enclave and transformed into a landscape populated by tourists. The motif of the home arises in parallel and echoes that of the brain. Private lite is put on display in fragmented, impenetrable, uninhabitable houses. Rather than serve as a symbol of a reassuring world, here the home is rendered uncomfortable and inhospitable. L'Heure bleue (The Gloaming) works by means of a double contradiction. The first is of the conceptual sort, since the habitat is no longer protective and can barely

accommodate us. The second is material: the wooden table, eut in half by a divider wall, is covered with a thick layer of black modeling clay. Above it end tables emphasize the idea of an impossible communication that the artists wishes to reestablish by asking us, "Have our memories ever really

existed?" The recurrent motifs of roads and islands add to this impression of an objectified and displayed memory. Dreams and reminiscences have washed up on islets isolated from one another (in appearance only). A "relational poetics" works its way between them, like thePaysages oubliés (Forgotten Landscapes) on wheels that imply that they can be shifted, set into motion. The drifting islets make up an archipelago of private memories.

ln making use of these images of mobile thought, Brégeaut fights against drowning and wards off stasis. With energy and lucidity shedefies forgetting and death.

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Julie Crenn, 2013, in ARTPRESS 398

Translation, L-S Torgoff

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