Delphine Reist

Born in 1970 in Sion (Switzerland), he lives and works in Geneva.

“In all Delphine Reist's works there's the use of found materials, available, not to say free-of-charge, but also a technical sophistication which goes to the point of enabling this material to express its function by doing away with the human element represented by its user. Jerry cans are rolled along so they can be moved; here, the jerry can rolls on its own. Cars are started: here, they start all by themselves. There's no longer any need to push trolleys: in the end, all we have to do is watch them moving. In relation to happenings, these moving installations have an advantage, which is that they do not really need spectators, which in turn gives them a fatal quality which is the quality of art. The onlooker, in these circumstances, becomes what he really is: a peeping tom.” (Olivier Mosset). 

What will you be proposing in the Hôtel-Dieu?

In the Salle des Colonnes: Rideau/Curtain! (2007, courtesy Galerie Triple V). A kitchen curtain in an exhibition area. Here, there, and everywhere... Wine drips from the curtain rod into old industrial buckets and pours over the rim. Curtain! Associates the heady effluvia of wine, the pleasant plashing of fountains and the harmonious monochrome of used tampax. And Gun Dogs (2008, courtesy Galerie Triple V). In the chiaroscuro of a forest of pillars, a group of guns aims at onlookers, depending on their mood.

In the annexes to the ceremonial rooms in the Hôtel-Dieu: Étagère/Shelf (2007, courtesy Galerie Triple V). In the kitchens of the ceremonial rooms, a series of shelves houses household equipment and tools in the throes of mocking or nervous spasms.

What does the dictum “Wherever I am going, I am already there” mean to you?

What's exciting between where I am and where I will be is what happens in the interval.
For an exhibition, anyway. I'm captivated by mistakes, discoveries, changes of track, in a word; everything that differs between project and execution, everything that means that what I produce goes beyond what I'd imagined. It's strange, because for all sorts of reasons—looking for money, work of organizers, publication of a preliminary magazine...—the anticipation is what it's all about. The project must be precise, interpretable, the budgets detailed. In the end, this capital moment, the one for which I carry on this activity, must, in everybody's interest, be minimized—it's obscene.

What does art enable you to do?

It's enabling me to keep busy for the next five months.