Leguillon is a former collaborator of Raymond Hains, who was best known for his décollages of posters and political slogans; he has devoted to Hains two exhibitions and an edited monograph published by the Centre Pompidou (J’ai la mémoire qui planche, 2001). Leguillon drew crucial lessons from Hains, a keen practitioner of détournement, and early on learned not to take the meaning of dominant discourses at face value. Instead, his Museum of Mistakesinvites us to use available archives to rewrite history— our history. It is for this reason, moreover, that he uses tools that are within everyone’s reach. One among them is the “home cinema,” which forms the basis of La Promesse de l’écran, a series of film projections that the artist holds on a 4:3 screen, which is raised during the interval and opens onto a bar with a 16:9 aspect ratio. At each screening, La Promesse de l’écran is followed by a subtitle indicating the film’s content, for the most part specifically designed to suit the projection site, and often with the involvement of other artists. La Promesse de l’écran: Manuel de photographie, for example, uses film extracts that introduce us to photographic practice, whereas La Promesse de l’architecture collects filmed sequences undertaken in remarkable architectural structures, or that describe architecture remarkably. At WIELS, a dozenPromesses will be displayed, including an unprecedented one conceived in collaboration with the Belgian artist Sylvie Eyberg.
Begun in 2007, La Promesse de l’écran continues the series of “diaporamas” that Leguillon has presented since 1993, and that mark the beginnings of his artistic practice. The artist’s most recent one, Le Diaporama/Vestiaire, which dates from 2006, will also be presented at WIELS. It is inspired by screenings of slideshows: at home, of holiday photos, and in art history courses. It interrelates images that Leguillon has photographed—often exhibition views—and that are sometimes accompanied by a reading, a performance, or a musical background. With each presentation, Leguillon changes the order, or the selection, of the images, so that each diaporama is unique and the semantic links woven between the slides are in constant fluctuation. This early work attests vividly to Leguillon’s interest in the contextualization of artworks, and of images more broadly, and the ways in which their conditions of appearance influence their reception.
If Leguillon thus sets images free of any predefined meaning—encouraging us to devise our own interpretations, our own stories—he also frees himself from all preestablished identity. As photographer, speaker, collector, bartender, projectionist, or curator, Leguillon adopts all postures without ever confining himself to any one of them. The Museum of Mistakes proposes that we follow his example and redefine our own role within the exhibition. Each person is thus given the opportunity to organize a screening or to engage in dialogue with the artist, who will be present throughout the project and will be able to present his performances according to his discussions with the public. In decompartmentalizing identity, whether it is a matter of the artist’s, the visitor’s, or those of the exhibited images, The Museum of Mistakesinvites us to rethink the conditions of the reception of art, here depicted not only as an object but also as one human activity among others. In so doing, Leguillon inquires into the political function of art within society, wherein each individual, being in a perpetual process of emitting and receiving information, has also become a medium.
Pierre Leguillon, born in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, in 1969, lives and works in Brussels. His works, performances, and projections have been the subject of many monographic presentations, notably at Raven Row (London, 2011), Mamco (Geneva, Switzerland, 2010), Moderna Museet (Malmö, Sweden, 2010), the Musée du Louvre (Paris, 2009), and Artists Space (New York, 2009). Recently, the artist presented two installations at the Carnegie International, held in Pittsburgh in 2013: A Vivarium for George E. Ohr and Dubuffet Typographer the latter being accompanied by a book published by (SIC) in Brussels. Leguillon edited the art magazine Sommaire between 1991 and 1996 and has published articles in journals such as Purple (where he had a column called “Calme Plat” from 2002 to 2004),Artpress (for which he edited the special issue “Oublier l’exposition,” 2000), and Le Journal des Arts. A laureate of the Villa Médicis in 2003, Leguillon teaches at HEAD (Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design) in Geneva.
