Sculptures-fictions (1987-1989)
In the Sculptures-fiction, landscape is the expression of a language. The natural is revealed as a cultural attribute. François MÉCHAIN presents this language until the photographic medium itself is brought into question. The sculptor is omnipresent: he interferes directly with the space and substance of nature, he models them to his own convenience. As for the photographer, he watches out for the curve or the slope of a horizon line; then, he has to find out the right angle and the right focussing to unite the different elements: the earth, the sky and the plants; a geometrician has processed them, who knows how to adjust within the same artwork both the offer of a new form of worship and the mockery of it. Moreover the way he works between the real and its image is a threat to photography.
François MÉCHAIN infrigues the fundamental principle of straight photography. First of all, as a sculptor, he sets up a part of his landscape. Then he takes a photograph of his sculpture right in the middle of nature: the latter will appear as faked and processed through photography as the sculpture is. His taking of photographs no longer reflects nature but the very nature of photography. Building up his language twice, first as a sculptor and then as a photographer, François MÉCHAIN awakes language echoes; they disturb our sight lines. Now a landscape conjurer, François MÉCHAIN reveals the tricks and breaks off our fascination by reminding us that the photography always arranges its subjects. His landscapes are built up so that the staging of our lack of vision may appear, going with the stream of irony and breaking down our aesthetic habits.
From Sculpture-fiction N°8, François MÉCHAIN proposes drawings (playing in french with the two terms: dess(e)in – project and dessin - drawing) at the same dimensions as the photographic enlargement to allow a better confrontation of the two modes systems of representation.
He sometimes exhibits them side to side or face to face.
Frédéric LAMBERT, 1989
