Espace de Réflexion

Jean-Luc Vilmouth

Remembering Jean-Luc Vilmouth

• Tsutomu Okada (Spiral Senior Curator)

In the winter of 2015, at a time when the world was enwrapped in beautiful hues, Jean-Luc left us without a word of warning.He was one who never stopped talking about the relation between people and art, and how there should be a place to teach that, as he did himself through myriad styles and forms of expression; connecting people with people, and things with things. This is something that those with whom he surrounded himself all shared, whether philosophers, educators, artists, or lovers.

Isn't all we need just a fair and free place that disregards borders and economics, with actual tools and activities to take the place of school-learning, like some kind of apparatus that refines talented youth before unleashing them on the world? This is an attempt at giving form to the artist's own query: exposited by those who were close to him, and visualized through a very special exhibit.

As the artist himself would have put it, “Watch your step!”

Jean-Luc Vilmouth  ― Circles and Spirals   ―

• Clélia ZERNIK（Professor at Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris）

It was in 2014 that Dōgo Onsen Art approached Jean-Luc Vilmouth to transform a room at the Hotel Yaya into a spatial work of art, which he did by taking a felt pen to draw concentric circles as if emanating from a round wall clock; thus becoming his installation dubbed “Time Room.”

Circular forms play a large role in the life of Jean-Luc Vilmouth, while playing an important role in his work as motifs -- such in the installation “Why is the world round?” (Pourquoi le monde est-il devenu rond?) -- and his methodology. Circles interest him not only in their simplicity but also in their efficiency.

The economy of circles intrigues Jean-Luc Vilmouth in their ability to hold the largest possible area within the smallest possible diameter: they are “simple but efficient” in the artist’s own words, and serve as his personal plumb line. Circles also define a course; one that starts from the self, and wanders afar to eventually return to the point of departure. Jean-Luc loved such travel that led him from his native Moselle to the Amazon, to Japan, to Taiwan...

Making long detours, he nevertheless always returns to himself. A circle is where the point of departure coincides with the point of arrival. It is this integrity, this trueness to self, this absence of compromise that characterizes Jean-Luc Vilmouth himself. His radical nature is simple and pure, as is a circle. 

Travelling further and further away (“You’ve gone too far” - Atelier Vilmouth), he never quite loses his way and makes encounters with others on his way back. The work of Jean-Luc Vilmouth is to go out and encounter others, to mingle and get to know them, to put himself in their place (“My Dreamhouse -- Myself as...”). While the points of departure and arrival are the same, a minor transformation has taken place. This is due to his mingling with others, where in the process he may have changed in his manner of dress,or other ways, both inwardly and outwardly. The “circle” has brought about a switching of roles; a space to reflect.

It is of this curiosity and love of others that the house of Jean=Luc Vilmouth is made: acts of altruism, human exchange, and inclusion. The round trip between “oneself” and “others” entails a creation of circles in a variety of situations; some larger and some smaller. There are those between “You” and “Me,” or between “Nature” and “Me;” between a tree and me or between Japan and myself. Circles of familiarity, or more specifically, of familiar and intimate surroundings; of tiny ecosystems instituted by the artist to render the world a place more inhabitable and humane. Jean-Luc Vilmouth has thus invented devices of speech and personal exchange, to design interpersonal encounters in human emotion over which he presides as toastmaster.

So it should come as no surprise that Jean-Luc Vilmouth’s first exhibit at Spiral Garden was called “Bar Séduire” -- literally, “bar of seduction” -- in which was staged the self’s encounter with another as a reflection of oneself. Giving feedback to one’s own self while possessing the eyes of another implies, in a sense, a spiral. With the “other” as a horizon, Jean-Luc Vilmouth has created from spaces of singular contemplation a repeating circle of questioning about the world, about the animal, about the future and things unseen, as his studio at Beaux-arts de Paris bears witness. And from the Spiral in Tokyo to the Beaux-arts in Paris we recreate the persistently murmuring and never-ending echo of his reflection. What do you think?

Espace de réflexion

Date：17(sat) - 25(sun), August 2019     11:00-20:00

Venue：Spiral Garden（Spiral 1F）

Admission Free

Organized by Wacoal Art Center
Planned by Spiral
Special cooperation with École des Beaux-Arts de Paris
Cooperation with Kanransha, SIA Office, Ambassade de France, Institut Français du Japon, Yukiharu Takematsu + E.P.A
Supported by Les Amis des Beaux Arts de Paris
Special thanks : Lisa White, Leila White 

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