Les Eclats Dans L’Oeil, 2013

Les Bains Douches, Paris, France

In spring 2013, Les Bains Douches, an old Parisian bath­house that was for many years a legen­dary club, underwent another transfor­mation into the site of a tempo­rary international exhibition. Artists were invited to interpret the interior of the bath­house through site-specific instal­lations and interventions.

The installation Les Eclats Dans L’Oeil features a facet­ted mirror object at its centre. Drawn on the room’s walls and ceiling are frag­ments of the effigy of Saint Lucy by Francesco del Cossa. The mirror object reflects all of the drawings onto one spot, where the frag­ments merge into one image: the saint’s hand holding a pair of eyes in the shape of lilies. This unique motif, first introduced by del Cossa for Saint Lucy, who is the patron saint of, among other things, eyesight, can be associated with an externalised or ephemeral view of the world.

At night, a spotlight is directed onto the mirror object, lighting up the drawings on the walls and ceiling. To calculate the shapes and angles of the facets in relation to the room’s construc­tion and the ideal viewpoint, custom software was developed for the installation.

Les Eclats Dans L’Oeil is an installation that can be applied to site-specific contexts and loaded with unique content.