Innerspace - Jean Comandon / David Douard

View of the exhibition "Innerspace – Jean Comandon/David Douard". Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2012. Image: Audrey Corregan

« What interests me in Jean Comandon’s work is the ingenuity of his filming device and of the imaginary that resides within it. […] His way of dipping into microscopic research, purely and simply, like a quest for interiority, is what links my practice to his. […] With the help of his camera, Comandon perforates the surface and goes beyond it to make visible everything there is to see. In my work and in sculpture in general, it is the surface of the object and the information that this surface can give us about interiority that interest me most.

My proposal for this exhibition is to create hybrid objects, between sculpture and display; to work with emotions, problems, sensations and with all the irregularities of the body and the mind, and to shed light onto them just as a scientist would make an atom visible. […] In order to show Comandon’s films in the best possible way, I am starting from the assumption that everything has consistency, that everything is an organism, and that this very organism, as hybrid as it may be, can be penetrated and explored. One must search deep inside and authorise oneself quite a few things, a bit like Joe Dante who, in the film Innerspace (1987), recounts the journey of a miniaturised Dennis Quaid contained in a 0.02mm capsule through the body of Martin Short. » David Douard

Innerspace is conceived in collaboration with Paris Diderot University (Thierry Lefebvre, lecturer and the students of the Scientific journalism masters course) and the Centre National du Cinéma (Béatrice de Pastre, Collections director).

Left: David Douard, Linked with an element of resignation, 2011, metal, print on aluminium, painted plaster, wood, 168x110x183cm. View of the exhibition at Catherine Bastide gallery, Paris 2011. © David Douard and Catherine Bastide gallery.
Right: Structure for accelerated filmshots by Jean Comandon at the Institut Pasteur (1945). © CNC - Fonds Chevalier.