Page 17 - Valerie Lallican - Optical Art

After some initial groundwork on the site, Valérie Lallican made an experimental model in her studio before
creating the final piece.

The resulting installation was formed as a virtual kinetism playing on the scenography of an otherwise
empty room in interaction with Mobile de 17 Carrés A Double Entrée at its centre.

White walls and ceiling, a white cast-iron radiator deprived of its vital fluids, a blocked white door, and a
window providing light for the space.

A single white door frame provides the entrance and exit to the room, the artist having meticulously
coordinated the visitors’ path around an ellipse-shaped roundabout encompassing the mobile.

The mobile is composed of 17 squares with two openings of which the central panel is solid. The PVC squares
are painted in acrylic following colour a scale of black, cobalt blue, light green, ivory, violet, grey and white.

Attached to two stainless steel rails with rings, the squares are suspended with nylon thread.

In this installation the Valérie Lallican created a powerful contrast between the inter-dimensional square
panels which optically generate space, and the confinement of the room.

The abandoned room gives one the impression of being in a particular space and time, one of a former
living space having been deprived of its domestic use. The mobile responds to this by being a catalyst of

energy and stabilising the space occupied by the visitor.

Looking into the squares the viewer is sucked into another space. The alignment offers a perspective of the
artwork cut into short optical sequences.

The act of walking in an ellipse around the piece contributes to the impression that one is immersed in the
projection of the work.

In The Cosmic Code, Heinz Pagels wrote “To discover what the world of quantum reality is, we mustn’t
imagine it, but rather specify how we observe it“.

Through Mobile de 17 Carrés à Double Entrée, Valérie Lallican masterfully interpreted the central issue of
the HOM(ME) IN PROGRESS exhibition, seen by over 6,000 spectators in 2019.