IVRY-SUR-SEINE.- In 2007 in Rennes, at the art center 40mcube’s invitation, Benoît-Marie Moriceau used black paint to completely cover the old house where the center was then located. That first intervention can be considered Benoît-Marie Moriceau’s masterful entry into the world of contemporary art. Taking its highly filmic title Psycho from the movies, this masterpiece could have “crushed” the young artist. He has since convinced attentive viewers of his ability to evolve through the formats of a wide range of interventions, from the most spectacular to the most invisible, while always infusing the chosen venue with an atmosphere, a climate of uncanniness, oddity, something inexplicable or eerie.

Moriceau begins with a context, a given place in which he integrates the mechanisms of representation. He seems to be attempting to carry out one of the rules laid down by certain artists starting in the 1970s, that of the “total installation.” He deploys a wealth of means to modify and dramatize the site he is taking over. During his last exhibition in September 2013, for example, at the Galerie Mélanie Rio, a possible film scenario was playing out between the lines, as it were, during the show’s run. It involved reviving a domestic dimension to the town house where the gallery was located, notably with the artist’s reinstalling a dining table in the reception hall, and inviting children to play a building game in front of a chimney fire. Visitors to the show played the main role simply by their presence.

Following a process of careful observation of the space occupied by Le Crédac and the center’s daily workings, the artist will arrange “exhibition situations,” like so many shifts back and forth between the inside and the outside. Moriceau will be working with the large hall, which is almost entirely enclosed in glass, a veritable promontory that affords a priceless view of the city.

It is a sure bet that with Benoît-Marie Moriceau’s work, a venue is never a guarantee that it will respect the function it was originally designed for, quite the opposite. In this case the standard white cube may be but an excuse for an appointment with the unexpected, a place where fiction and reality meet, making possible what the artist is constantly in search of, revelation.