Gygi “appropriates the materials and instruments of urban structures to present a multilayered critique of the authoritarian systems in our culture.”[2] Actually, he mimics the effect of these mechanisms, but without characterizing them unequivocally and, more importantly, without ultimately operating them. Watchtower, polling station, road barrier, cage, boardroom, or a tribunal tent – to mention the structures and surroundings of some of his famous works – are left orphaned, neutralized, devoid of any use. And in this context, Gygi’s works are either a prototype (future action) or environs that have been deserted (past action).
The two works on display at the exhibition conform to the lines of discourse sketched above. The first is an open steel cell crisscrossed by horizontal bars bearing serrated blades, a sort of Kafkaesque torture device, and the second is a collapsed sack made of black leather, which might have emerged from a dungeon of sadomasochistic practices. The works attest to potential activity as well they do to an act already performed, and the suspended violence in them, that which will never be actualized, becomes a possible sanction.

Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

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[1] Irene Hoffman, The Aesthetics of Control, in Exhibition Catalogue, Fabrice Gygi, Orange County Museum, California (Oct. 2005 – Mar. 2006), JRP Rinigier, Zurich, 2005, P. 25.

[2] Ibid.

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