Seven Sites
S. Mercure
09.07.25-20.07.25
S. Mercure unveils a new iteration of his research around extraction, first initiated in 2024, where the very material of the exhibition becomes the central vehicle of the artistic inquiry.
This time, the series of paintings on view is the result of a collection process carried out across six contemporary art venues. At each site, the artist conducted two types of extractions: a fine powder obtained from wall surfaces (via sanding) and ambient moisture (collected using a
dehumidifier). These raw materials, gathered with precision, were then blended to form a composite liquid paint, used to produce the final works.
Each painting thus contains within it the material trace of six distinct spaces—a fusion of physical and symbolic identities. This union gives rise to hybrid visual forms, where the architectural, historical, and atmospheric characteristics of each site intermingle and are reconfigured.
The works were produced on transparent PVC membranes, stretched within frames, where the liquid substance slowly evaporated to reveal subtle, textured patterns. Fragile and luminous, these surfaces function as material palimpsests, bearing the echoes of spaces no longer present.
Yet the project introduces a seventh space: the exhibition venue itself. Unlike the others, this space did not participate in the extraction process. Its role is not as a source, but as a site of reception, exposure, and confrontation. By introducing works derived from other exhibition sites into a new, unrelated one, the artist opens up a symbolic tension: What does it mean for a space to host the residue of others? What happens when a work returns to the white cube as a product of that same kind of environment, and in the same time as a foreign body, reconfigured and altered? This disjunction highlights the relational ecology of art spaces, where materials, meanings, and contexts are in constant circulation.
The exhibition becomes not a culmination, but a reframing—a place where absences are made visible and where the presence of other places unsettles the neutrality of the here and now.
Seven Sites continues S. Mercure’s exploration of the boundaries between the visible and the invisible, the physical and the conceptual.