Exhibition of the Mezzanin gallery – Alone in the window, a hospital bed summons all possibilities

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Did the person who occupied this layer heal? Or has she closed her eyes forever? Perhaps she will return after a spritz of cleansing, since two still full infusion bags are waiting in their support. But basically, how old is the patient? Impossible, when passing in front of the front of the Mezzanin gallery, in Plainpalais, not to stop dead: enthroned alone in the center of the exhibition space, an unoccupied hospital bed hung with fresh sheets lifts all kinds of questions.

Called EX-POSITION21, this installation was created by Gianni Motti and can be visited both indoors and from the sidewalk – and at any time since the premises remain lit nightly. Born in 1958 in Italy and established in Geneva, the artist likes to appropriate current events, the meaning of which he distorts in order to orient him towards the absurd or irony. In these times of pandemic, rather than affixing his paw to yet another mask, he seized this object which he describes as “the star of the furniture 2020-2021”. Of all the television news for a year, the bed crystallizes both anguish and hope. He summons the fear of succumbing to the virus, of dying far from his family, but also the assurance of receiving treatment and being able to survive evil.

Unexpected fascination

A little dramatic, a little funny, the empty sack confronts the viewer with all the possibilities. “I don’t like giving directions, but rather opening up to everyone’s interpretation,” explains Gianni Motti. A work of art is not a dictionary. ” Taken out of its context, this banal hospital equipment arouses an unexpected fascination. When we contemplate it for a long time, it exerts a powerfully hypnotic effect, because it objects to human absence: without suffering, no bed. It is to this cry of emptiness that the spectator seeks to respond, filling the gap with layers of guesswork.

During the opening on February 16, which was also the only opening day of the exhibition, the artist who “believes a lot in vibrations” was able to observe the evocative power of his proposal. “People were flabbergasted, circling around the bed to touch it.” Indeed, the roundness of the white hoops at its head and at its foot attracts the hand, which discovers with surprise the toy sensuality of molded plastic. The object was not made for the occasion, but unearthed at the cost of intense research. “You don’t buy a hospital bed like that,” reveals the artist. It was quite complicated! And of course, it was produced in China. ” The solution bags come from a pharmacy.

“I don’t like giving directions, but rather opening up to everyone’s interpretation. A work of art is not a dictionary. ”

Gianni Motti, artists

Defining himself as “70.5 kilograms of atoms, if we could line them up side by side, we would not have enough zeros to measure the length”, Gianni Motti manages to make the elusive manifesto manifest. However, “the virus, a bit like conceptual art, is invisible,” he emphasizes. We can see a certain optimism in the title of the hanging, which announces, perhaps, that mass bed rest will soon be a thing of the past.