Jean-Pascal Flavien’s Ballardian House At Esther Schipper Gallery

Installed on sanded ground within the walls of Esther Schipper Gallery, Jean-Pascal Flavien’s ‘Ballardian House’ assembles various sculptural elements that exist together as a reduced domestic environment. In homage to Ballard, Flavien devises a universe that symbolically charges the structural components of the piece with conditions of psychological and existential unease. Two divisions of the life-sized blue house entitled ‘ballardian four’ connect at a hinge, seemingly propped up in the sand like a birthday card. Upon closer inspection, the structure presents a partition with habitable space, including a camping bed and a manifesto of displaced Ballardian words. The other side acts as a sealed vitrine to a rock, an artifact that claims its enclosure in defiance of the scattered stones arranged in the sand. Continuing the themes of mirroring, coupling and splitting that occur throughout the piece, Flavien includes a pair of entangled red metal chairs, alluding to a presence of inhabitants and informing a viewer’s subconscious anticipation of interaction.