gerlach en koop, collectif d’artistes situé entre la Belgique et les Pays Bas a invité Jacqueline Mesmaeker à rejoindre leur exposition Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe au Gesellschaft für Actuelle Kunst, à Bremen en Allemagne. Jacqueline Mesmaeker réalise quelques Introductions roses dans l’espace d’exposition. 

Dans la publication qui accompagne l’exposition : 

Les Portes Roses (1975) consists of thirty-two watercolours all depicting three pink rectangular shapes, each one slightly larger and paler than the one that came before. A long quote is dispersed over the thirty-two A4 sheets with one word (sometimes two) over each shape, a quote from the first chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We reproduce the quote here as it was printed in the catalogue raisonné published ten years ago by (SIC).* We were surprised to find a pink paper wristband in our copy when we removed it from the shelf. A paper wristband to an event we apparently didn’t attend, or maybe just one of us did. Which event? Neither of us can remember.

‘There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall**; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open*** any of them.**** However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!’*****

The disappearing doors will not be on display in this exhibition, but its counterpart will: Introductions Roses the fitting of pieces of pink fabric in certain interstices repérés, found gaps or blind spots in the artist’s home that were photographed and made into a slideshow in 1995. Mesmaeker made it into a site-specific intervention (2019) for the Brussels exhibition space La Verrière, and it will now be especially adapted for Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe. The pink fabric will direct the gaze to the details of the room, expelling the cloud-like whiteness of sleep and giving way to the brightness of the day. The return of detail. 

Yes, of course, Alice’s white rabbit has pink eyes.

* Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-land, in: Jacqueline Mesmaeker. OEuvres 1975–2011, ed. Olivier Mignon, Bruxelles: (SIC) – Couper ou pas couper, 2011, p. 12.** Exhibited in BOZAR in 2020, we could see that the door ‘hall’ was already completely colourless.*** You could see in the (SIC) catalogue that the ‘open’ door still contained a trace of pink.**** The thirty-two watercolours end here.***** Until It Fitted! became the title of a 2007 exhibition at Etablissement d’en face, perhaps as a way to make up for the remaining part of the quote. Les Portes Roses was documented during this exhibition. If the bleaching process continues at the same pace, we will see the ‘little golden key’ disappear in thirteen years time, the ‘solid glass table’ in twenty-six years …

gerlach en koop , Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe.  19.09.–28.02.2021 – GAK, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Teerhof 21, D 28199 Bremen

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