PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Jean-Luc Vilmouth
b. 1952 in Creutzwald, France; based in Paris
www.jeanlucvilmouth.com

Work in exhibition
Café Little Boy, 2002/2015
Work in three dimensions (installation)
Evolving site-specific installation with 4 walls, 3 plywood tables, and 10 wooden stools, all covered in green chalkboard paint; 6 black-and-white photographs taken in Hiroshima with messages from survivors and 2 text panels, each Diasec-mounted on plexiglass; 1 clock; chalk in different colors
Artist’s reproduction of an original installation currently on display at Centre Pompidou
Collection of Centre Pompidou, MNAM/CCI, Paris (purchased in 2005)

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656448993779

Jean-Luc Vilmouth has produced art in public or in everyday spaces, particularly focusing on interventions in the works that transform environments and alter relationships between people and surrounding objects. Café Little Boy (2002) was inspired by messages written on the wall of an elementary school in Hiroshima after the bombing. The school was eradicated except for the reinforced concrete outer wall. This shell of a building was used as an aid station immediately after the bombing, and the surviving blackened wall was heavily inscribed with messages to family members or pupils at the school. This work replicates this scene in the present, with viewers asked to write messages on the walls or table. Their involvement becomes part of the work, and messages are written in response to others, forming exchanges, eventually overlapping one another until they become an illegible sea of text.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art