Subterranean Paper and Light

by Maty Ralph

Stories of the secret underground have always intrigued us. From Indiana Jones to BBC’s Planet Earth, our hunger for sub-surface mystery is constantly being reflected in art and entertainment. In Nouveaux Troglodytes, Philippe Blanchard manages to take us a step further by providing us with a narrative-free setting in which we are encouraged to play out our own fantasies of darkness and depth.

It starts with the shapes. Stalactites and stalagmites are commonplace for any spelunker, but for your average urbanites these forms are a gateway into a world that beckons forth our primal urge to explore. Blanchard knows how to play with this urge; he gives us form, light and sound in just the right dose. If he were to offer too much detail, the world he created might have become too vivid and, by consequence, too small. Instead, he uses the principles of minimalism to gift his audience with the tools they need to create their own story.

Mysteries in the modern world are getting harder and harder to find. With satellites, we discovered a way to map out the topography of Jupiter’s third moon and suddenly the surface of our own world seemed rather bush-league in comparison. And so we find ourselves venturing beneath the surface where the ancient unknown can still hide, unthreatened, for now, by the prying eyes of the digital age.

And it is in the relationship between the arcane and digital where Blanchard uses contrast most brilliantly. He has built a world of stone and moss and darkness out of pixels and paper and light. As the animated conical forms blink and buzz and the electronic soundscapes resonate and reverberate, the space becomes shrouded in the delightful haze of contradiction. A future-history hybrid is formed where nothing is what it seems and the only certainty is that this place is definitely far beneath the surface.

And that’s where we secretly want to be: where mysteries still have power because they remain unsolved.

The cave, after all, is where we think art was born. In subterranean earth lay the first ever galleries, where the images on the walls strove to understand the world above, a world where the mechanics of virtually every phenomenon were still awesomely enigmatic.

Now, in the age of information, the gallery must play host to the cave. Nouveaux Troglodytes is an enthusiastic return to a space where we may once again explore the last great, untold secrets of the modern world.