Sarkis

For the 2018 edition of Printemps de septembre, Sarkis created a light and sound installation in the Jacobins church, which has now been acquired by the City of Toulouse. Between the pillars of the imposing colonnade with its dizzying verticality, he suspended seven fluorescent crystal tubes unfolding the colours of the rainbow. In the choir, a beam gathers these seven tubes and lights up and goes out to the rhythm of a calmed breath. Thus Sarkis unrolls throughout this plane of separation the procession of colours that speak of light, understood in all its metaphors: life, joy, diversity, conciliation, ascension, etc. This rediscovered plane of moral and spiritual elevation is emblematized while a soundtrack, realized with the musician Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, softly diffuses at our feet, in the choir, the noises of the outside world, ordinary noises of common life, noises of the meteorological episodes, noises of the passing of time, a whole rumour of the outside world which slides its redundancy or its discrepancy between the visitors and the noises "in real time", between the material world and the spiritual world. How big should the luminous tubes that punctuate the nave be? Sarkis chose a multiple of the unit of measurement used for the construction of the church, the "cane of Toulouse", a little less than one meter eighty. Mesure de la lumière (measuring light) is the title of this work, and it is also what it does, measuring the place and the light. Hence the knotted ropes that hang along the tubes and measure their size. We see that Sarkis inhabits this exceptional monument with the humility of the respect it inspires in him and the empathy it awakens in him. The past does not pass, when the artists bring it back to the present.

The Pierre Fabre Group is the main sponsor of the production of the installation, which also received support from les Amis du Printemps de septembre. Acquisition made with the support of the Ministry of Culture. Donation of le Printemps de septembre to the city of Toulouse 2021 - Collection les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie, Toulouse. Deposit les Abattoirs, Musée - Frac Occitanie, Toulouse to the Couvent des Jacobins.