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To coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Paris Month of Photography, the Michèle Chomette Gallery, which is almost the same age and still just as determined to fulfil its mission as an artistic explorer and treasurehunter, takes both a look back and a leap forward by presenting “LE FIL”, an exhibition devoted to François Méchain, the first of its major artists to enter the collections of Paris-Audiovisuel, later to become those of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

Between the triptych “LA MER” (“The Sea”, 1984) and “LES MURS” (“The Walls”, 2009-2010), stretches a common thread: between sculpture made for photography, and photography treated as a sculpture of the world.

Across the continents, from one drilling or building project to the next, this thread resonates like a chord with the history of places, of men, of forms.

It vibrates like the string of a bow, stretched taut by the initial idea of each project then by the body that implements it, in the middle of the countryside or on the edges of the city. François Méchain is rooted in the earth: the earth that nourishes life, receives death, and gives artists the best lessons in scale and humility; for a long time, he extracted his raw materials from the earth, blending the vegetable with the mineral, making on-site sculptures like so many transient landscapes, destined to return to nature, while photography, for which he had made them, immortalized them and gave them a new artistic status.

For the past few years, however, François Méchain has extended the scope of his activity, the meaning of his works and the materials used, with in situ installations reflecting a more critical, political approach beyond the sense of awareness that was already palpable in most of his, shall we say, “ecologically oriented” pieces. The bowstring is taut, and the arrows shoot out and hit their target, whatever the fault, the foible, the ineptitude called into question by Méchain, be it planetary, national or simply human, whether it belongs to history or spoils the present. He is a determined artist, working in locations he appropriates using simple means that are easy for anyone to interpret.

The artistic act, its physical presence, is still related to sculpture, but the materials are now different: they are borrowed from everyday life (containers, knives, chairs, ladders), the discourse is more radical, more monolithic, sometimes less poetic, but it forms a solid block of meaning that hits you full in the face and forces you to think. François Méchain first adopted an attitude, then began asking questions, and finally took up a stance. And where is photography in all this? Whereas it engendered, underpinned, and catalyzed his in situ work from 1980 to 2005, in his recent work, although still indispensable, it is more of an accompaniment, an organ of visual transmission with its own power of attraction and awareness. It seems appropriate, in the context of interrelationships and mutual dialogue that forms the theme of the 2010 Month of Photography, to focus on the trajectory of an artist who has worked with the MEP several times, in a spirit of reciprocal loyalty.