2023-08-13 09:51:48
Little Jean-François Fourtou’s room isn’t very big, and it’s not so tidy! At least if we start the visit of the exhibition “Range your room! by the life-size apartment that sits in the middle of Saint-Sauveur station.
Faced with a black and white photo of the artist then aged 4, seated on the balcony of his apartment, we stroll through this accommodation located in Ménilmontant, just above the family bookstore. We are in the 1960s, as evidenced by the orange Formica kitchen table and chairs, the Scandinavian-style dining room, the mustard-colored chenille bedspread on the parental bed and the sky blue and white striped wallpaper in the bedroom. of the little boy.
This is where the exhibition – or the artistic performance, as the visual artist prefers to call it – really begins: because all around the reconstructed apartment in this former freight station converted into a cultural and leisure space, toys and furniture have been duplicated, as if escaping from the bedroom but in a gigantic format, transforming the visitor “as a Lilliputian or as a Toy Story toy”explains Lucie, cultural mediator for Lille3000.
The most striking example? The 4 x 12 meter bed on which you can climb to rest. The office too, like an arch, is now disproportionate, like the wooden construction games – made of resin but shhh… – or the little blue, red and yellow train that came to life, offering the public the chance to board to discover the exhibition differently.
Right next to the old rails of the Saint-Sauveur station, the enlarged train passes under a tunnel, and there, surprise, the passengers hear the father of Jean-François Fourtou pronounce the eternal “Clean up, clean up your room!” »three key words at the origin of this amusing, magical and slightly nostalgic artistic performance.
Giant hopscotch and block game
Caught up in the game, young and old lose their bearings in this beautiful, uncluttered, concrete space that perfectly suits the imaginary world of Jean-François Fourtou. The artist, who lives and works in Marrakech, has also dispatched colorful critters, snails, butterflies and bees on the gray walls.
We still have fun playing giant hopscotch or finding the cubes of the child’s room identically or not because certain faces have been recreated by the artist in reference to his life and past works, by example his famous house that fell from the sky.
The visitor alternates between the exterior and the interior of the apartment, which therefore appears here as a doll’s house. Bradley, 9, who came with a leisure center, is flabbergasted by the small television topped with an antenna installed in the living room: “On this TV from the 1960s scroll the programs of the ORTF that Jean-François Fourtou watched, Skippy, Good night kids or Zorro. It is our role to explain to children life at that time,” indicates Lucie, pointing to Papa Fourtou installed on the sofa while his wife is busy in the kitchen.
The young guide bears witness to the interactions that arise in the family home: “It’s a house that the artist opens up to everyone and that speaks to everyone. » When a room, a place that could not be more personal, becomes universal through the imagination of a grown-up child.
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