FAKE 2015
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At first glance, a charmingly bucolic, rustic vision has been offered to our eyes. It seems as though everything has been arranged in such a way as to allow as many people as possible to enjoy it, particularly pedestrians, whose gaze is drawn in as they walk by. The architecture forms a sort of theatre in which the placement of each element – the fountain and the plants – seems to have been chosen deliberately for that purpose. Yet the reality is entirely different. We are looking at a garage door in a rich residential neighborhood. Unlike our first impression, the setting is closed, even locked. We are in fact looking at a garage door with a trompe l’œil scene painted on it. Everything has been arranged to keep us from perceiving reality. The point is not just to transform a door that has been found aesthetically wanting into something pleasant to behold, but to hide the place where, most likely, a luxury car has been parked. Everything has been done to distract not only the onlooker’s gaze, but also their thoughts. Pernicious concepts of appropriation, rejection and an obsession with protecting property have replaced the more generous notion of sharing. The very idea of a garden as a place of transition from public to private space has disappeared, and in fact been misappropriated to serve a dishonest strategy of camouflage. The trompe l’œil’s misleadingly appealing hyper-realism suddenly appears in its true guise, as awkwardly ostentatious and nauseating kitsch.
Yves Peltier