The Magician’s Sleeve

He jumped into the void, or more precisely, he learned to cross landscapes by skydiving; first through the sky, then on the ground, in caves, forests, cities. He explores with care, listening and sharing the places he crosses, to give back the attention and history they sometimes forget to offer themselves.

In his last exhibition, his sculptures—resembling acupuncture needles—made visible his emotional connection to the buildings. He shaped the experiences of those who pass through and inhabit these places, using medical gestures on the architecture, with objects that accompany his research, like butterfly wings that disintegrate or emergency boxes.

These boxes are inspired by those used in public transport to display glass breaker hammers. But the hammer is no longer there, as if it has already been used to free someone. All that remains is its container: an empty, open box, now a sculpture of absence, of a rescue that has become impossible, of an escape that has already occurred.

This is a precise practice. During his residency here last summer, he meticulously observed, measured, and archived. He immerses himself, listening to what is said to him. His instinct guides him. There is something of the mathematician in him, someone who hypothesizes before verifying everything. Intuitions are the best products of listening and presence, like encrypted dreams that must be deciphered.

“Remain unreadable” he says, to leave open the possibility for all interpretations. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. “At a certain moment of its metamorphosis, it’s chaos—a cloaca in the chrysalis—and yet, the butterfly remembers it used to be a caterpillar.”

Terzo Fronte is plural: it is a living space, an exhibition space, a book. Depending on the hour and the day, Terzo Fronte transforms, modulates, changes. Its identities don’t disappear; they make room for another envelope, the one presented, the one our interlocutor wants to believe in. After Capitalist Aesthetics, which sought to understand how art can free itself from a dominant aesthetic context, and Out of Town, which focused on artistic community experiences, Terzo Fronte now enters its third chapter, The Voluntary Disappearance, exploring artists who refuse the injunction of visibility, of overexposure.

During the days we spent together in July, Maxime began talking to us about butterflies as a metaphor in response to the theme of this chapter. Our invitation for this exhibition came with a note: disappearance as a political act. The injunction to be visible is inseparable from the artist, yet experiments in invisibility allow us to rethink this demand in a time when the social narrative of one’s presence is more exposed than ever.

As an extension of the butterfly wings laid out on the ground in La fuite et l’enveloppe, Maxime spoke to us about the transformation processes of butterflies, preferring to approach disappearance through the positive lens of metamorphosis. The physical envelopes—from caterpillar to butterfly, through cocoons—show us that everything that disappears leaves a memory that allows a new form to emerge.

Disappearance, transformation, crossings: these ways of passing through, leaving almost invisible traces of change, lead us to question how we want to be present in the writing of a work’s memory. In 1971, the American artist Lee Lozano intentionally ended her career, beginning to document her acts of disappearance in notebooks. Through this decision and her absence from events like exhibitions, openings, and meetings with art professionals, she visually recorded her withdrawal and refusal as a political act.

Not being there, but showing it. The subtitle of this chapter is The Magician’s Sleeve. In the sleeve of the magician lies the question of mystery, of belief, of skepticism: what is better left unexplained.

In Terzo Fronte, Maxime embraces our space, inserting himself with small, almost invisible gestures, like the movements of an illusionist. Nothing is indicated anywhere. He invites us to explore, to search as he did, to be attentive. He surprises us, like magicians who hide the metamorphoses they prepare within their sleeve.

Georgia René-Worms & Colin Ledoux