Robert Wilson, A chair and its shadow: Ketabi Bourdet - 22, passage Dauphine, 75006 Paris

Charlotte Ketabi-Lebard and Paul Bourdet are honoured to present an exhibition by the American artist and theatre director Robert Wilson, celebrating their recent partnership as part of Paris Gallery Weekend. The gallery, which aims to present both contemporary art and design, finds in Bob Wilson a particularly pertinent first proposition. Through his contribution to furniture design from the 1970s to the present day, his practice as a visual artist, and the dramaturgical universe he has developed on stages around the world, he embodies a singular transversality within the artistic landscape of our time. Presenting several iconic pieces of furniture and drawings conceived as part of his various stage productions, the exhibition explores this creative spectrum, which is always underpinned by a powerful overarching vision. It also sheds light on an unprecedented relationship between design and the performing arts.

“I take as much care in designing a chair as I do in creating a theatre piece. Every detail relates to form and line, time and space.”*

At the origin of his almost unusual passion for chairs, and perhaps also of his inclination towards minimalism, Robert Wilson often cites an episode from his childhood: during a visit, when he was twelve, to his uncle, who lived as a hermit in Albuquerque, he was fascinated by a narrow, high-backed wooden chair from New Mexico, which stood in the midst of an almost total austerity. Two years later, he received it as a Christmas present, cleared his room to accommodate it, and recreated an equally austere “scenography” around it. Years later, the Hamletmachine chair (presented in the exhibition) seems to pay homage to this seat, the genesis of the artist’s approach to design. This story speaks volumes about the importance of chairs and other pieces of furniture in the artist’s stage productions: embodying a character, a gesture, or a mood, they carry the entire dramaturgy of the work, while also existing as pure stage elements, central to the visual economy of the set.

“The solitary occupation of his sidelong landscapes by a chair evoked images of human characters existing before speech, whose arrival, or perhaps return, was still awaited. (...) These mystical seats were solid, reliable, made of an apparently imperishable material (...) They could neither disappoint, age, nor die like the human character they represented. They were both his substitute and his alter ego.”**

When it comes to the chair created for the now-mythical production of Madame Butterfly in 1992, therefore, one can only see in its bamboo leg the crutch of a dignified, stoic yet thwarted expectation, at the heart of the drama. “Irresistibly solitary, they evoked the presence of desired absences.”** Conceiving his chairs as true sculptures that “have their own personality, awaken resonances and provoke reflections”, Robert Wilson thus belongs to a design tradition that emerged in the 1980s and prioritises form over function. When the discomfort of his chairs is criticised, Bob Wilson responds: “Comfort is just a state of mind.” This tendency reaches its peak in the iconic Hamletmachine, made of perforated metal, which pushes industrial style towards extreme purity and seems to negate comfort itself in favour of theatrical expressiveness. Designed for the premiere of Heiner Müller’s eponymous play in 1986, this chair was part of a larger ensemble and was accompanied on stage by a long table with equally radical lines, around which the action unfolded. It is a chair that questions the very idea of a chair, a kind of “Brechtian distancing”, to borrow Umberto Eco’s words.*

But to stop there would be to overlook the original vocation of this furniture, initially designed for the stage and therefore according to specific parameters, proportions, and functions—this form of “deception” that is inherent to the magic of the performing arts. Thus, in each production, these pieces are essential to the architectural definition of the space. Through their stark and hieratic lines, which punctuate and divide the stage and its expanses of colour, they not only contribute to Robert Wilson’s pared-back aesthetic but also create shadows and light. The model created for the opera Parsifal is the clearest manifestation of this, as shadow, materialised through black lacquer, becomes the very principle of the design. The flattening of relief corresponds to the initial perception one has of this furniture in its original context, from the auditorium. The artist therefore reduces the work of staging to three dimensions: time, space, and light, his true signature. In this sense, his work is pictorial, and it is no coincidence that he has always practised painting and drawing alongside his theatrical work.

Trained in interior architecture and painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Robert Wilson practises graphic arts in connection with the conception of his stage productions, but also as an autonomous practice. The exhibition presents an exceptional group of preparatory drawings for the productions of Medea (1984), Hamletmachine (1986), and Parsifal (1987), which offer an intimate insight into the artist’s flashes of inspiration and his fundamental relationship with light. The thick, energetic, and expressive line, together with the pronounced use of black, reveals the speed of thought, the imperative of a vision waiting only to be committed to paper. Those familiar with the classical rigour, precision, and purity of the artist’s stage productions will appreciate the distance between these initial sketches and the culmination of a monumental undertaking, as well as the near-incommunicability of these original sources of inspiration. Like a painter, Robert Wilson begins with the formless and divides space into areas of fullness and emptiness, shadow and light, gradually allowing an overall feeling to emerge—the broad outlines of an architecture that is still rudimentary. Renowned for turning every stage into a veritable painting in which nothing is left to chance, Robert Wilson conveys through these sketches a much more primitive, expressionist quality—an energy that in reality underlies every movement on stage and gives life and substance to these aesthetic images. Bob Wilson developed within a post-Minimalist New York art scene shaped by the work of artists such as Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, and approaches his stage productions through this prism.

Named a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Robert Wilson has maintained a long-standing relationship with France since the beginning of his career in theatre. It was indeed at the invitation of Jack Lang, and at the Festival de Nancy, that he achieved his first major international success with Deafman Glance in 1971. In 1991, the Centre Pompidou, whose creation he had helped shape, dedicated an exhibition to him, and in 2013 the Louvre followed suit, presenting no less than the artist’s bedroom. His collaborations with the Paris Opera have been numerous, most recently with a highly acclaimed production of Turandot. With this exhibition, Galerie Ketabi Bourdet is therefore delighted to contribute its own small piece to this history.

Eva Pion

• Interview with Umberto Eco at the Opéra Bastille in 1991, Robert Wilson, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991.

** Emilios Ambasz, “Robertos Wilson, Luminarios (premier régisseur) et maître”, Robert Wilson, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991.