Nicolas Clauss
Tuesday to Saturday, 2pm to 7pm
Sunday, 3pm to 7pm
Closed on Mondays
➝ Thursday 24 & 31 December: closes at 6pm.
➝ Friday 25 December and 1 January: closed.
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There is no cloakroom at Le Lieu Unique, so please take the necessary precautions: large bags, suitcases and luggage are not permitted in the exhibition.
For this new exhibition, Nicolas Clauss films bodies in the most ordinary situations: that of moving through public spaces, where every day we encounter strangers who pass by, brush past us, and then disappear.
Through hundreds of sequences shot over a six-month filming period, the artist set up his camera in front of more than 200 participants, whom he met in and around Nantes.
The work reveals that the anonymous figure on the street—the one we pass by every day without paying them any particular attention—is transformed on screen. Each face, each body projects a unique intensity that opens a silent dialogue with the audience.
Spread across seventeen screens, the videos are arranged in ever-changing combinations, embracing the element of chance that governs every encounter. Some bodies face us, others pass us by or turn their backs on us, occasionally breathing a shared rhythm into the installation. As time slows down, amid the interplay of scales across the different shots, the gazes come alive, rest upon us, and accompany us on this journey.
Nicolas Clauss was born in 1968. After studying social psychology and spending a decade painting, he turned to video and programming. His work explores human presence through installations in which filmed bodies are transformed through editing and programming. His installations have been presented at the Centre Pompidou, the Mucem, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City). He regularly collaborates with artists from other disciplines, notably Angelin Preljocaj, Ahmed Madani, Salia Sanou, and Pierre-Yves Macé.
