En Apnée

In the bare chapel, the wide wall, which unfolds once the side door is crossed, seems to have a breath of its own. The hand brushes against it like a skin, following its grain and its undulations. Between the blue of the ceiling and the anthracite of the floor, the blind wall extends.

As much a mason's tool as a tattoo artist's, the Dermatograph is a pencil that marks most surfaces, especially the skin. The color fades and the residues become tinted.

Thirty-two square meters, twenty-one days, forty-three Dermatographs, a rolling scaffold, a level, a long flexible rule, eleven erasers. Start from the top and work your way down. Draw the line from left to right. Take it back as if it were a single line, running from one edge of the drawing to the other. Space out the line as it descends to the ground. Stratify the time it takes to complete the drawing by creating intervals. Adjust the push on the pencil, while varying the movements of the hand, shoulder, pelvis, leg, foot. To mark certain breaths by the bending of the knees and the softness of the wrist. To erase vertically by crossing the direction of the passage of the lime. To leave the peels of gum on the ground like a volatile fence line.

Thought as a performance, the endurance in play gives the consistency of the drawing. The exhaustion of its components (time, tools, energy) completes it.

In this in situ wall drawing, the line is the seismographic recording of the internal and external rhythm of the body that carries the pencil; a line that follows, like the breath, the alternation between breathing in and breathing out, a line of life.