FRAGMENTATION OF PICTURE WALL, 1970

The idea of the Fragmentation of Picture Wall occurred in 1970 when Lizène discovered the exhibition room of the Association for Intellectual and Artistic Progress in Wallonia (Apiaw). Lizène saw what was behind the scenes: the curtains draped over the picture walls on which the paintings were hung were there to hide the extremely flaky and cracked surfaces of the walls. For a moment, Lizène considered integrating this site-specific dilapidation into his exhibition of Specific Art. Cracking complements the brick walls that Lizène would start painting in faecal matter in 1977. The web of cracks on the wall led him to the Division of Picture Wall principle in 1975, when he would divide up a fragmented picture wall for other artists, based on the idea of “Exhibiting the Other” (1974). The CAP group (Courtois, Lennep, Lizène and Nyst), was thus invited to exhibit at the Elsa von Honolulu-Loringhoven gallery in Ghent. On his own initiative, and without asking Jan Vercruysse or the members of CAP, Lizène invited his friend Antonio Silvestre Terlica E. Pinto to exhibit on the picture wall set aside for him. He suggested that he urinate in order to mark his territory, as some species of animal do. Terlica E. Pinto exhibited a self-portrait in a cape and urinated on the wall, on either side of the photo. Shortly afterwards, in a CAP group show at Spectrum in Antwerp, Lizène once again fragmented his picture wall, and this time he showed a painting by Jean Hick with, below it, cans of the artist’s paint. Finally, in 1975, when taking part, again with the CAP group, in an exchange with the Pour mémoire group from Bordeaux, in a double exhibition (at the capc in Bordeaux and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi), the Minor Master divided up his picture wall and shared it with Anne and Patrick Poirier and a watercolour painter, Marc Guiot, again inviting all three on his own initiative. This was the first Division of Picture Wall based on the idea of dividing up land for development. He lent his picture wall and even had the (unrealised) idea of doing so for money. Lizène’s contribution to the dividing-up process consisted in delimiting the plots. In his own plot he exhibited his gold watch (stolen shortly after the exhibition) and an out-take from the film Forcing the Body (not stolen)…

DIVISION OF PICTURE WALL, 1975.

1. Practice instituted in 1975. The first remake was given in 1998 at the opening of Galerie nadjaVilenne in Liège. 2. The second was in the Art: Concept gallery, Paris, in 2001. 3. Then, after its acquisition by simple protocol by FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, two new remakes marked the history of the Fragmentations of Picture Wall. The first was in 2004, at FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, Marseille, during the exhibition Prêts-à-Prêter, featuring works from the collection. The second, at the Villa Arson art centre, Nice, in 2005, for the eponymous exhibition Division de cimaise (what a homage!), for which Jacques Lizène suggested that all the teachers and students at the school (and anyone else who wanted to) should hang their work on a wall that was very seriously divided up at the entrance of the art centre (for a new homage). 4. For each of these Fragmentations, Jacques Lizène divides up the wall allocated to him with a piece of string or with glue, following a random plan that draws divisions of more or less equal sizes that are meant to function as surfaces for individual hangings, both separate from each other and forming a unitary whole. The ensemble sketches out a kind of jigsaw puzzle to be filled by following the playful principles set by the artists in accordance with his desires at the time. What might make an artist want to share his picture walls? If, in Lizène’s first projects we can detect the hippie influence of the community spirit typical of the 1970s (“what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine”), nevertheless we can also perceive – as always with Jacques Lizène – a hint of irony, for originally this “non-territorial” gesture involved the fact of pissing on the edges of a territory that was actually delimited. This action links art to an animal instinct of possession and, even more, to a notion of the author as contributor of physical drives that are closer to the ridiculous than to the so-called sublime. The fact of subsequently entering a museum, then a FRAC or art centre, gives the piece a new dimension. The whole system of representation of art is now called into question. What is disrupted now is not just a simple territory between artists, but the systems of classification of exhibition “hangings,” with everything that this involves as an exercise in affirming identity and hierarchy. Out go the dogmatic rules dictated by modernist evangelism: linear hanging, centre of the painting at eye-height, symmetry of objects, visual interplay between works or simply formal propositions. In contrast to all these principles, the objects presented in Lizène’s Divisions can be askew, solitary, upside down, presented too low or on the contrary too high. It is no longer the straight line that dominates but the territory, the cartography, the sinuous and chaotic path between the works. Art becomes play, nature and discovery. The rational (and consequently academic) logics of exhibition design are thus utterly messed around, which is what he had already done with his Leftward Sloping Canvases in 1970, and in 1974, when he decided to attach wheels to every work he produced. Once again, what Lizène is calling into question is the system of aesthetic values. The point is not to denigrate or reject the museum, but to instil an element of originality and joyous anarchy into its rules of decorum. Without seeming nostalgic, the Fragmentations/Divisions of Picture Walls evoke a period – up to the mid-19th century – when works of art were hung above and beside each other, some of them hid by sliding velvet curtains in order to arouse visitors’ curiosity, or on the contrary, protect their gaze. One could also suggest that these Fragmentations are merely the hidden face of cabinets of curiosities that do not wish to define themselves as such. In Marseille, for the Prêts-à-Prêter exhibition in 2004, Jacques Lizène indeed made plans to bring together in a single Division some ex-votos typical of the city’s history, photographs of emblematic footballers from the local club (the famous Olympique de Marseille), paintings by anonymous minor masters from Liège and photographs from Erwin Wurm’s project Take this position for one minute, 2000 – all of this following the logic of a Collection of Curiosities/Curious Collection. The first three were too much effort to obtain. Jacques Lizène doesn’t like it when things end up requiring too much work. The photographs by Erwin Wurm were already there. They therefore had the privilege of temporarily joining their paths in a Destructured Division

Marseille, 2005

Pau, Le Parvis, 2010

Anvers, Muhka, 2009

Katowice, BWA, 2011

Paris, Passage de Retz, 2011