Seven Days Hotel

There's a fantastic exhibition by Fabien Verschaere at the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Lyon until 29th April.

Born in 1975, Verschaeren has spent very long periods of his childhood in hospitals due to some mysterious disease. That's where he started drawing his first pictures and developed a very poetic mental universe that allowed him to go beyond the daemons of his illness.

For the project Seven Days Hotel, Verschaere has transformed the first floor of the museum into a hotel. The reception is bathed in red light, monsters, ghosts and witches are painted on the walls... Welcome to a space where you're going to constantly shift between dream and nightmare! The walls of the hotel 7 rooms are painted in black and red and the light is a bit dim. Each room is tracing the initiating journey taken by a sick child to face the world.

In room one, there's a bearded man, sitting on his hospital bed, while a little train is turning on the floor; elsewhere dozens of little ceramic fairy creatures fligh above your head and the one of an angel who seems to be absorbed in prayers; here the curtains are moving and the big head of a devil is uttering words you cannot understand; the walls of another room are covered with bones, each of them "wearing" a watch, etc. Everywhere there are evil looking creatures (even Batman and Mickey Mouse look nasty), but also princesses and characters that look like the artist himself. You're never sure whether these figures you meet are threatening you or just captive of the hotel (maybe both).

The soundtrack of this journey into horror and awe is by Liquid Architecture. The rock band has composed 7 tracks, they are played loud but not too much and complete the experience in an admirable way.

Once you've closed the door on the hotel, you might wonder whether you have dreamt or hallucinated. There are two more rooms, there's no music there and the walls are white, they display the preparatory drawings of the exhibition. Some of them are black and white, others are illuminated like manuscripts from the Middle Age.

I made very few images. Can someone please explain me why you are allowed to make pictures of any exhibition during its opening and are treated like a dangerous criminal when you want to take a photography after the opening party?

More links about Fabien Verschaere: CIAC, Galerie Michel Rein, Parker's Box and on myspace.