Florence Doléac

Petit Chemin Plantaire

2010

Installation

Invitation de Fondation 93 en coopération avec Gérard Borde

Le CRAFT et Porcelaine Pierre Arquié, Limoges

“Small Flat Way” is a footbridge whose surface is made of porcelain tiles with a raised motif, a kind of tactile vocabulary, inspired by Braille. The foot confined in its shoe ends up by losing its subtle capacities enabling it to analyze terrain. The information transmitted by the soles of the feet to the brain permits good stability in the erect posture. This information comes from nerve endings located beneath the soles of the feet. This walking surface, whose relief is made up of small blocks, means that the soles of the feet can be massaged while walking, when barefoot. It invites visitors to try out this barefoot, eyes-closed stimulation. The relief made up of small round blocks is adapted to a gentle stimulation of the soles which does not saturate the information pertaining to them. These small blocks hobnob with the tiniest nerve endings for a batter upkeep of our initial capacities.

Florence Doléac sets her work in an interstitial space where design hobnobs with art, and where presentation and production methods waver between a system that is both commercial and institutional. The fact that she lays claim to this not very common stance endows her with a specific identity. The fact is that not only does Florence Doléac introduce a tension between production and exhibition, with answers that brim with wit and poetry, but she also develops a line of questioning about function and its contrasting counterpart: uselessness. Her proposals and ideas sidestep established codes in order to upset the way we usually perceive things; she intercepts our gestures by putting a finger on their limits. The incongruousness of the various situations thus created refers us to our own imagination, thus lightening a reality that is far too straitjacketed.