Bleu Satellite – Coreaú, Bordeaux

A telescope is primarily an optical instrument, but it also embodies an imagination, a reaching towards the distant:

The word «telescope» comes from the Greek τηλε (tele) meaning «far» and σκοπεῖν (skopein) meaning «to look, to see».

To look far, to see far, this formula can be interpreted in many ways: seeing far into time, or into space? Into the future or into the past? But this idea can also be diverted and used with distance given our time, as a way to question our relationship with the world and our ability to project ourselves into it.

The telescope carries our gaze into the cosmos. Yet, it only looks at the sky from the Earth. It is in this that it inscribes itself in an emotional relationship with space: earthly and sidereal space meet in the eye and in the mind of the viewer.

This clash of limits echoes the thoughts of Bruno Latour and Philippe Descola: our position in space changes according to the era and the evolution of the gaze it induces. We now realize that, although we can see very far, we remain confined to Earth. The concepts of dema- terialization and unlimitedness clash with the material and physical limits of our presence in space.

For the pilot version dedicated to Artorama of this traveling exhibition, Bleu Satellite – Coreaú proposes a six-part composition consisting of recent or contextual works by Alexandre Clanis, Estelle Deschamps, Pierre Labat, Emmanuelle Leblanc and Arnaud Vasseux.

Through a shifting of perspectives, each of them will propose in their own way a reading of the telescope as an invitation to «see far,» at the risk of overflowing the visible.