The relationship between art and architecture is a recurring issue in the work of Lucie Le Bouder. Its raw material is space itself where she creates her works, works inseparable from their context. The architecture is an integral part of her work. She operates the plastic potential of the space, its physical and perceptual properties. She is challenging and questioning its function: Can the place be a work of art, can the artwork  be a place?

The exhibition FRAGMENTS by Lucie Le Bouder presented at 22.48 m² offers a set of drawings and a new installation. The in situ installation is made by plasterboard and metal rails. The artist breaks up standardized plasterboard and then fixes cracked and broken metal pieces rails. Showing what appears to be the result of an accident, which would have happened within the exhibition space, Lucie Le Bouder wants to give the illusion of a rugged architecture and frozen in a state of chaos.

This work expresses both order and deconstruction, construction and deconstruction. The viewer and the place are forced to feel this sculpture that appears to be a potential threat, that can possibly at any moment collapse under the feet of the visitor. The ground where we are supposed to be able to walk safely, to contemplate the works is fragmented and becomes fragile. It shows openings and meandering that unveil an invisible world beneath the grey surface layer. This below , painted in orange , makes us assume that a living form comes to the ground, as the magma following a volcanic explosion. It refers to the invisible part that resides in all visible.

Concerning the drawings , which seem to be search sketches, they are autonomous from the installation: They are the works of a parallel result that leads the artist. Drawings that are not forced to prepare a possible transition from sketch to volume, but have their own rules and their own universe. She uses the paper as a surface and not as a material, a material that experiences the intervention of the artist, such as lines of colored felt through the foil or delicate cuts of blades that scrape the surface of the paper.

The proposition of Lucie Le Bouder for 22.48 m² invites the viewer to walk in the space and to explore an artificial and folded landscape, where the classic codes of the exhibition space are challenged. The white cube reference is neither white nor cube. The structure is destroyed along while the destruction is built.

Rosario Caltabiano, Yvonne Ruescher

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