Taken Into Proportion: Notes on Pulpe et Capsule / Ido Nahari

With memories of an unretrievable past extinguished and cravings long stomped out, Pulpe et capsule is a public meditation and art exhibition on what it takes to keep the fire burning.

Taking place in the gigantic remains of the Pillard industrial unit which has produced combustible burners, Samuel Chochon animates its now collective histories of decline with painted and sculpted observations. Dedicated to erased, imagined and possible spaces, Pulpe et Capsule serves as an exercise in shrinking an enormous mechanical carcass into canvases, sound installations and site specific sculptures. Placed in what once used to be its worker canteen with a comprehensive overlook to the Bon-Secours quarter, the exhibition welds the bilateral meaning of fabrication as both material creation and made up stories. Fusing blazes, with nostalgia and citrus into one cantine, Pulpe et Capsule embraces leftovers rather than discard them. Flame, glass and metal converge within its setting. What was once discarded is also what holds potential for revival. ROYAL AMNESIA (2025) is an unfinished arch composed of disposable joints purchased in the local stores, while La ville aspirée (2025) is a radiant painting of a yellow brick road hinting at the mythical paths taken. Presenting a painted building inside one still standing, the exhibition stresses the tension and resemblance that the incomplete artworks have with the unfinished urban territories surrounding them; placed in a dilapidated industrial site and outlooking an urban environment in a constant state of becoming but never being. Nowhere is this strain more obvious than in le fond des choses (2024). Placed in limbo, the painted figure is either in the process of coming into sight or vanishing from it. Looking downwards onto what could be a setting sun while taking a swim, the drooping character either merges into the background or attempts to separate and become separate. When not pointing out to the deliriums on the ground, Chochon is committed to charting the stars above. Luna s’endormit au milieu de la fête takes a matching set of metal moons from the local amusement park to create a soothing rocking chair that tucks a charcoal sketching between them.

Perhaps it is because of that intense and sharp relationship that the artworks have with colossal sizes of both the industrial corpse that hosts it, as well as the soaring building blocks that enclose it, that some of the sculptures and paintings are shrunk and humbled. Broken apart into their molecule structure. Miniaturised into small dimensions. Mining Pool (2025) takes a much closer look at small droplets, Zoetrope (2025) is almost a microscopic observation of a sliced lemon, Baleine (2025) squeezes the mightiest and heaviest of animals and brings attention to its smallest bits, and Opérateur operaiste (2025) is dedicated to the cable configurations that made up telephone operators, blending senses into one modest canvas stretch. Harmonising uncertainties with the excitement of discovering the new, the exhibition combusts with human possibilities.

Here, within this strange and shapeshifting setting, where some artworks are no bigger than the hand that painted them while others take up an entire wall, Chochon considers what it actually means to take things in proportion. Like in heartbreak, taking things into proportion is not about creating a uniform size, but a meaning changing with perspective. Looking back, what was once large is now contracted. What was considered a meaningless fragment now becomes larger than life.