The exhibition begins with Circular Inception, an installation of nine sets of concentric discs which, as they unfold in space, form a series of aerial geometric drawings to which self-generating music composed by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi responds. In this infinitely poetic proposition, the roles are reversed: the ballet no longer illustrates the music; the music responds to the ballet.
And with good reason: impossible is not a word in Crespin’s vocabulary. The fifteen subsequent works at the Maison de l’Amérique latine demonstrate this. Though music is no longer involved, various silent geometric ballets evolve within the exhibition. A worthy heir to the kinetic artists, the Venezuelan uses tiny invisible motors controlled by computer programs developed in his studio—Crespin was an engineer in a previous life—to animate simple or complex forms in space: straight lines, circles, cubes…
The movements that seem to mimic life are never abrupt. The forms evolve very gently from order to chaos and back again. Are these installations or sculptures? The whole resembles a series of moving drawings, an impression reinforced by shadows projected on the walls, drawing new forms that recall Kandinsky, Klee or Moholy-Nagy. Crespin calls these cast shadows “desirable side effects”. Desire, that loving emotion that irresistibly draws you towards another, is indeed the driving force of Crespin’s work.
Fabien Simode
Elias Crespin, Slow Motion, Maison de l’Amérique latine, 217 boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris, until 6 May 2017.
Illustration: Elias Crespin, Circular Inception, 2016, Plexiglas installation at the Maison de l’Amérique latine, Paris.