Laurent Grasso at Musee departemental d'art contemporain de Rochechouart

Laurent Grasso, for his exhibition at Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art, has converted the museum's impressive 17th century wood-beamed roof-space on the top floor of the castle into a landscape machine. It is here he has chosen to install Project 4 Brane, a steel and glass module that conceals a projection room of uncertain transparency. Its title refers to the branes or multiple dimensions envisaged in “superstring theory” to provide a unified vision of the universe, linking quantum mechanics with general relativity.

Like an inverted ship's hull, the castle roof-space amplifies the signs of several other works that Laurent Grasso collectively calls his Neurocinema. Conjuring up images of some form of futurist cybernetic entertainment, in reality the name pinpoints neuronal mechanisms that underlie all forms of cinematographic expression, from creating the illusion of movement to the manipulative art of editing. Our attention is drawn to the extent moving images have fashioned perception of contemporary reality over the past century and, to this end, the works evoke or re-examine different analogical techniques used to record and reconstitute the world we see around us. One significant recording technique was the camera obscura, a direct forerunner of cameras. Here it takes the form of a darkened room visitors can enter and witness a fluctuating vision of landscape seen from the vantage point of Rochechouart castle. The image is accompanied by real-time and recorded sounds of crows as they wheel above the castle roofs. Landscape elements outside the castle are therefore guided analogically into the museum space, and faced with this illusion, the onlooker is able to suspend disbelief and attain a state of false innocence.

Principles of copying and tapping into the ambient landscape have been developing in Laurent Grasso's work over the past ten years. This is illustrated for example by connections between his very recent 320 (a scale-model radome listening device like those used by the Americans in their global spy network codenamed Echelon) and an earlier video, Tout est possible (Everything's Possible) in which we overhear the inner thoughts of a man walking through the streets of Marrakesh, dangerously leading viewers down the paths of his private madness. Similarly, in Radio Ghost, aerial views of Hong Kong are combined with a soundtrack of the disembodied voices of Asian film stars.

The exhibit will run from June 14 to September 22. For more information visit www.musee-rochechouart.com

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