For two weeks in July, exhibition space Exo in Paris hosted Belgian artist Aline Bouvy‘s solo show, Sorry I slept with your dog. Little information was given with the announcement of the show apart from an image which stood in as the Facebook event cover photo of one of Bouvy’s drawings of a worried face next to a sculpture cast of a foot. The face looks worried by how close the foot is and also potentially how contorted and flexible the person out of sight’s leg is. Bouvy’s drawing manages to make the viewer know this. It looks at you.
The phrase ‘Sorry I slept with your dog’ is to imagine a moment of self disgust. The moments in the the show are laid out via a similar format or thought/word-process of someone reflecting upon themselves. Sculpture feet are pigeon-toed hiding under black painted hay bails. The hay bails could even have only been in the space in order to host sad, sorry feet. There is a mini man drawn laid back or maybe knocked back on one of the thinner walls -which makes a nice contrast between his horizontal body drawn with perspective and the actual, thin vertical wall (aren’t all walls vertical?)
Underneath the charcoal man on the wall is everything he had in his pocket, according to a story that is so present inside all of the elements in this show and in Bouvy’s wider practice -without being verbalised. Of course the plaster casts of some buttons, a lighter, half a domino and some other bits that are lying on the floor are not from this guy’s pockets because he is a drawing, but Bouvy doesn’t even make you ask this ridiculous question. You just look at it and feel melancholic and you understand something.
Mounted on to the painted hay bails are some large printed images of a vaccum cleaner or water bottle with mountains of straws, or a squid, which, actually, upon describing in words seem to make sense in relation to the act and fact of suction. Bouvy’s work attaches itself on to you and maybe there is a really good reason for there being no words around the exhibition press. **
Exhibition photos, top right.