Recto Verso, postscriptum

Nearly four months before the opening of his Recto Verso exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Solothurn, Switzerland, Bernard Voïta was able to install a mockup of it in the museum, which was closed for technical reasons. He placed cardboard replicas of his sculptures and marked out his two dimensional pieces by projecting square lights on the wall. This proto-exhibition, a life-size model of what would be his actual show, was documented with black and white photographs that mimicked regular installation shots.

This photographic material, somewhat the real archive of the project, introduced the catalog of Recto Verso, published for the occasion by Kunstmuseum Solothurn Verlag Für Modern Kunst.

The book Recto Verso postscriptum features a dialogue between the documentation of the mockup show and that of the actual one; between black and white photographs of what took place beforehand (from April 10 to April 14, 2018) and color images of what the public eventually saw (from August 11 to October 21, 2018). The systematic visual confrontation of these two moments through archival images invites us to reassess our point of view as art viewers. The Shadow, Andersen’s tale included in the book, suggests the confrontation is ambiguous.