Mark Dion, Les Nécrophores – L’enterrement (Hommage à Henri Fabre), 1997
Les recherches d’un chien – La Maison Rouge, Paris until January 16th, 2011
The Maison Rouge has everything I could ever want from an art gallery – as well having great taste in art, I can walk to it from my house, it has a cute café, and most importantly there is not one bling-bling coffee table book in its gift shop.
I went to see its latest exhibition ‘Les recherches d’un chien’ which translates as, ‘The investigations of a dog’ last week. The title comes from a Franz Kafka short story where the main character, a dog, questions its place in society. The exhibition’s aim is to show artists who are sniffing around and wagging their tails in the same way as Kafka’s canine.
It was organised by the art collective FACE, a coming together of big contemporary art organisations from all around the world, who are here to present their biggest stars including Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons and Bruce Nauman.
It took me about ten minutes to realise what was so different about this exhibition, it then hit me that this show had something that no other in Paris could offer, silence! As most of Paris’ tourism is based around art it’s so difficult to have a few golden moments to think about what you are looking at without the ‘Oh. My. God!’, of a passing tourist.
This furry friend was my favourite piece in the exhibition. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that you never see moles but you know that they’re there from the mess they make. The first time I caught a glimpse of one was when someone’s dad brought it into school. It was such a let down. Going on the size of the molehills in the school playing field I thought it would be at least the size of a cat, but in fact it was tiny like a hamster. Disappointing even for the smallest eight year-old in her class.
The size of Mark Dion’s sculpture made up for previous disappointment in life. The artist’s reason for showing it on such a ginormous scale is apparently to demonstrate the beetle crawling on its back, a species known for eating rodents. As I’m no insect expert, I didn’t even notice this at the time and simply wanted to give it a big hug. However when I got closer my fuzzy warmth soon turned cold as I realised that the giant mole, also had a giant noose around its neck.
At the sight of its drooping head my stomach sank with a sense of guilt. You see, I am one of those animal-lovers who coos embarrassingly over furry four-legged friends. Yet, the smell of bacon means I could never give up my habit of eating animals and become a vegetarian. Living in France has made the situation even worse, my horizons have been opened to so many new types of meat, trying everything from frog’s legs to intestines and of course the cruellest of all – foie gras. Despite this, I still maintain a feeling of self-righteousness by drawing the line at rabbit and horse.
So the mole reminded me of my hypocrisy – the sight of a synthetic strangled rodent gives me a lump in my throat, yet I don’t think twice about tucking into a nice bit of rump steak.
This post also appears on Artsharks
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