MERDECES KLAUSNER, “HORIZON DES ÉVÉNEMENTS”

Murmur, dessin par effacement sur tirage pigmentaire, Mercedes Klausner 2026. ©Mercedes Klausner

Through her exhibition, the artist Mercedes Klausner, a fellow of the Archipel residency programme, reveals the research and work she undertook during her stay in Calais.

Le Concept, École d’Art du Calaisis
15–21 Boulevard Jacquard – 62100 Calais

Opening
days: Free entry from Monday to Friday, 9am to 12 noon and 2pm to 7pm

This residency programme is organised in partnership with the Frac Grand Large and the schools

art centres in Calais, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Denain and Lille, and receives support from the DRAC

Hauts-de-France and the Pas-de-Calais department.

In a society saturated with visual content, where this abundance ultimately leads to a form of exhaustion, the artist seeks to restore meaning to the images that emerge, which carry memories and symbols. Attentive to the generative power of traces, Mercedes explores the landscape in search of evocative forms, weaving connections between archaeology, spirituality and environmental dynamics.

Drawing primarily on material remains found at the foot of the cliffs dating from the Pleistocene, she creates images from basic materials – chalk, iron oxide, sand – in dialogue with the natural forces of rain and wind. *Horizon des événements* thus invites us to adjust our perspective and prompts reflection on the human need to create symbolic images, in an eternal quest for meaning, exploring the power of the unconscious and tracing back to the very origins of the image and magical thinking.

Because ‘in order to regain a full awareness of these connections with the world around us and the past, and to overcome this crisis of perception – which is both a symptom and a contributing factor of the massive ecological crisis we are currently experiencing – we must therefore relearn how to see’*.

*Baptiste Morizot, *Le regard perdu*, Actes Sud, 2025.