EL HIERRO Towards evening a fierce wind comes up over the land from the sea, over the stunted low forest and the scrub, so that everything that grows is bent down, contorted, and knotted in hard dry strands. The island of El Hierro is formed by an extinct volcano, the northern half of which has disappeared into the sea leaving only its southern slopes and the remaining crescent of the crater. Made up of basalt rock and volcanic ash, it rises steeply from sea cliffs to the spine of the crater’s edge, opening out to a narrow sloping plateau towards each end of the ridge. The upper slopes are forested and fre9uently shrouded in clouds. But it rarely rains. For centuries before its colonisation the island was believed to be at the edge of the world. The people who were later to cling to its rock, were driven by extreme poverty and were, in the struggle to survive desperate hardship, often at the edge of abandoning this hard place for the fearful promise of other yet more distant and unknown lands. Low walls, often now in disrepair, divide the greater part of El Hierro. These walls of cinder dissect and grow out of the island’s surface. Arranged in patterns, sometimes clear and sometimes in dense convolutions, they are the monument of possession and division; each sector graduated and determined by what grew in it. Over generations a fig tree would take root, grow, bear fruit, and shrivel, leaving a small circle of stones within another, within a s9uare of rocks carefully arranged. So that in places the land is measured and possessed, in esoteric signs and magical enclosures, as though in a kind of delirium. Elsewhere, as the disorder of rocks gives way to serried lines of petrified lava spewed out of the volcano and channeled down its flanks, the walls criss-cross the flows and the whim of chaos is hardly distinguishable from the calculation of division and limit. This labour, the building of the walls, the enormous burden of generations, now appears abandoned as though a mythical people had passed, and yet families lived or died within its consequence, in the distribution of land and the sparse production they had from it, as they survived another year or were overcome. (Craigie Horsfield)

BAY OF NAPLES The smoke from the boat burning in the Bay of Naples shrouded the rocks along the sea wall, the road behind it and the crowds that had gathered to watch the fireworks at the end of the festivities and the precession that had wound its way down through Chiaia to the sea in the September of that year. The great plumes of smoke and the last illumination of the fireworks were engulfed by dense clouds that hung sullenly over the city so that it was almost lost in the shadow, its lights as though snuffed out and even its constant noise dulled and distant. It appeared for a moment as though the world had opened to another time as all that was familiar was swallowed up. How thin the skin of the present is sometimes, stretched taught and almost transparent. And beneath it the turbulent dark. Subterranean currents moving to another pulse. While above the clamorous astonishment that had greeted each burst of brilliant light, just moments before, as people jostled and pressed together to see new wonders, was muted, to be replaced by an uneasy restless murmur. Some way off to the South, the silent volcano – and to the North-East, beyond the smoke and the villas along the bay, beyond the hillsides where the lemon groves used to be, and now are apartment blocks, there beyond the point, the sea floor rises and falls, small islands appear, and disappear as suddenly as they came, brief moments in light. The newspapers print a familiar paragraph, and topographic charts are rearranged. Gasping in the choking fumes the crowd stirred again to urgent life, showers of sparks fell from one last exploding star and people began to drift away, greeting each other and parting. Nothing had happened. The smoke was clearing. The still burning hulk was a long way off across the bay. (Craigie Horsfield)

At the carnival at Palma de Campania the February air was bitterly cold and as the light faded in the late afternoon a biting wind came up across the slope of the volcano. On the last day of the celebration groups of dancers and performers, several hundreds of people from different districts of the town, compete with each other in showing the costumes they have laboured on for months. In that winter, young men and women shivering in the cold trooped onto the stage excited and expectant as the last stragglers from the performance before were leaving. First one group then another would emerge from the press of figures to dance to the front of the high platform they stood on while their supporters in the crowd belocheered and shouted as they recognized their friends. In the intervals, as one group left and the next prepared to come on, the guest of honor was presented, a television starlet who stepped petulantly from her limousine into the cold to wave apathetically to the crowd as the MC extolled her fame over a megaphone, before she retreated, with evident relief, surrounded by fawning men vying to catch her attention, to take refuge again in her car. She was gone long before the last troupe of performers were being ushered on. The four young women were the first of their party, hesitant as they were pushed on to the stage to stand ready and watchful. Several other figures in extravagant costume danced on to take their positions but there was a pause. There was some confusion as those waiting to go on to the stage were being redirected and others were brought from the line that stretched into the shadows beyond the steps up to the platform. The young women became anxious and uncertain whether to stay in their allotted place, so exposed to the gaze of the crowd. There was a sense of the waiting figures, the young women in their now hesitant boldness and expectancy, being at a point of fragile equilibrium in which they appeared as though spectral, both older and younger than they were, caught between what had been and would not be again and that which was to come, that which was already forming and certain … but delayed, leaving them as though in suspension, irresolute, unable to leave, or to go on. The cold wind cut to the bone, and everywhere there was busy disorder, around the stage and amongst the crowd, but here only the movement of their white dresses as they stood swaying back and forward. And one dancing. (Craigie Horsfield)

La galerie Nadja Vilenne est particulièrement heureuse d’accueillir Craigie Horsfield, figure majeure de l’art contemporain britannique. Généreuse, l’exposition rassemble une sélection d’œuvres réalisées entre 2005 et 2016, autant de jalons des projets menés par l’artiste à El Hierro (Tenerife) et dans le sud de l’Italie, à Naples, Via Monteoliveto et via Chiatamone par exemple, à Sorento ainsi qu’à Palma de Campania, autant d’approches du réel transcendant les lieux évoqués car, oui, en ces fascinantes dramaturgies, tout est réel ici.

Diplômé de Saint Martin’s School of Art à Londres en 1972, Craigie Horsfield se tourne rapidement vers la photographie, le cinéma et le son. Il quitte la Grande-Bretagne pour des raisons politiques la même année et part vivre en Pologne. Pendant sept années et y suit des cours d’art graphique à l’Académie des Arts de Cracovie, ainsi qu’à l’Académie des Sciences puis choisit de devenir DJ. C’est dès 1969 que Craigie Horsfield commence à réaliser des photographies en noir et blanc. Ses clichés – paysages, portraits d’amis ou de proches, nus ou encore scènes d’intérieurs – restent confidentiels pendant une dizaine d’années, Horsfield choisissant de ne les publier qu’à la fin des années 1980. Ses photographies, par leurs grands formats, convoquent la peinture classique. Elles renouent avec l’idée de tableaux. L’usage de la lumière semble trahir une volonté de dramatisation. Et pourtant,  Horsfield décrit bel et bien des lieux et des gens à travers ses titres et manifeste ainsi une authentique intention documentaire. Elle interroge à la fois l’art et la vie, le familier et l’extraordinaire, l’épique et le quotidien, le temps lent et long du présent qui garde trace du passé et amorce le temps à venir. Craigie Horsfield s’est longuement interrogé sur cette question de la temporalité, s’inspirant des écrits Fernand Braudel, fondateur des Annales, pourfendeur des premières réalités mouvantes qui font trop de bruit, défenseur d’un temps long prenant en compte une triple temporalité, celle d’un temps géographique, d’un temps social et d’un temps de l’événement.  La réalisation d’une œuvre, que ce soit son tirage, sa contemplation ou son effet émotionnel, s’effectue dans notre espace commun, se déroule dans un présent relationnel, déclare Craigie Horsfield. Mon expérience m’a confirmé, encore plus clairement, dans mon idée de la permanence de l’histoire, dans l’idée que ma propre culture ne faisait qu’un avec celle des siècles précédents. La photographie, précisément, peut prendre en compte cette conception. C’est ce qui la rend inconfortable, dit-il encore.

L’exposition s’articule sur plusieurs temps. Celui d’une dramaturgie solennelle, Procession Blanche et Procession du Christ Mort à Sorrento, relationnelle dans ce bar de la Via Monteoliveto à Naples, festive et carnavalesque Piazza de Martino à Palma de Campania. Celui de l’atemporalité d’une nature morte, bouteilles, ail, grenades, pivoines de la Via Chiatamone à Naples, certaines délicatement imprimées a fresco. Celui, enfin, de la nature et des paysages, un temps suspendu et minéral à El Hierro, un tumulte sur la baie de Naples, vue depuis la Via Partenope, ce jour où, coïncidence étonnante, s’enflamme un bateau alors que, plus loin, la foule admire les éclats d’un feu d’artifice. Pendant un instant, il a semblé que le monde s’était ouvert à une autre époque, car tout ce qui était familier était englouti, écrit Craigie Horsfield. Comme la peau du présent est parfois fine, tendue et presque transparente. Et sous cette peau, l’obscurité turbulente.

 Nommé au Turner Prize en 1996, Craigie Horsfield a notamment été invité lors des Documenta X (1997) et XI (2002) à Kassel, à la Biennale new-yorkaise du Whitney en 2003. Nombreuses sont les institutions qui lui ont consacré une exposition monographique parmi lesquelles la Fondation Antoni Tapies à Barcelone (1996), le Stedelijk Museum d’Amsterdam (1992), le Musée du Jeu de Paume à Paris (2006), le Museum of Contemporary Art de Sydney (2007), la Kunsthale Basel (2012)  ou encore la Tate Britain (2017). En Belgique, le Muhka lui a consacré deux expositions en 2010 et 2018. Craigie Horsfield a également mené deux projets collaboratifs en Belgique à BOZAR (1997) et au Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens à Deurle avec Paul Robrecht and Erik Eelbode (1996-97).  On retiendra également la double exposition organisée en 2016 et 2017 par le MASI, Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, à Lugano et le Central Museum d’Utrecht. Ces deux expositions ont donné lieu à la publication d’une importante  monographie, Of the Deep Present.