Born in May 68, Martin Le Chevallier has been developing a substantial body of work since the end of the 1990s, one in which he brings his critical eye to bear on contemporary myths and ideologies.

His first work, Gageure 1.0 (Wager 1.0,1999), takes the “spectator-cum-guinea pig” through the world of corporate discourse in the form of a labyrinthine arborescence on CD-ROM. After this project, he produced a series of games (Flirt 1.0, 2000, a game of seduction made from American film noir movie excerpts; then Vigilance 1.0, 2001, a game of video surveillance) and interactive videos. During his artist residency at the French Academy in Rome in 2000-2001, he made Félicité (Bliss), an evocation of an idle utopian society, and Oblomov, a minimalist adaptation of the novel by Ivan Gontcharov. This cycle of interactive videos came to an end in 2005 with Le Papillon (The Butterfly), the story of a character whose life is upset by the impatience of viewers.

Le Chevallier often uses the very instruments and processes that characterize our times as constituent elements in his representations of them. Witness the way in which consumerist pathologies are conjured by a vocal telephone server (Doro bibloc, 2003) and the security utopia by a “coming attractions”-type trailer (Safe Society, 2003). In 2007, the artist created a “fair” piece for the Fiac, in the form of a painted wood polyptych, in an ironic tribute to the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy (NS).

Le Chevallier’s recent pieces work on the basis of an interference with reality. In this vein, he asked a consulting firm to propose a strategy for him to attain glory (The Audit, 2008); he traveled in procession to Brussels with a miraculous European flag (The Holy Flag, 2009); he secured a Tuileries Gardens pool with remote-controlled, toy police boats (Ocean Shield, 2009); and he set up viewpoint binoculars overlooking a hypermarket (“Slowing Your Blinking” exhibition, 2010).

As a counterpoint to these contextual projects, the artist has pursued his film work. A case in point is “2008” (2010), at once a film and an installation, which presents a picaresque narrative of globalisation.

Le Papillon
2005
Interactive video
Le Papillon describes the route of a character in search of happiness. When he reaches his goal, the film continues, but the action stops. A peaceful music rocks the viewer who is contemplating the animated picture of a happy ending without end, nice for the character, but probably soon boring for the viewer. To escape boredom, he then has the possibility of initiating action. The character then he wondered about his life and goes in search of a new existence. He became a politician, a priest, a vagabond ...

Le Papillon has the stylized form of a fable. So he is mute but sound. The few dialogues take the form of intertitles, while the sounds are present and participate in the narrative. At the end of each episode, the viewer can intervene again and live again the ectasy of a change of life by proxy, by dipping back his hero in the chaos of fiction.

A non-interactive version of the Papillon exists under the title of “The inconsistencies of the butterfly”.

Le Papillon has been produced by Camera Lucida Productions, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Communication (DICREAM) and Drac Ile-de-France.