Levalet - 'Clap'

With Clap, Levalet does not pay homage to cinema in a literal way. Instead, he appropriates, diverts, and fragments it. For the first time, he develops a body of work based on assemblages of vintage film posters, which he cuts, rearranges, and recomposes. From these fragments emerge new, hybrid images where references intersect and echo one another. At the center of these compositions, his recurring self-portrait character, inserts itself into these reconstructed worlds. Sometimes actor, sometimes spectator, it exists in an in-between space, oscillating between fiction and reality, as if absorbed by the image itself. The exhibition also unfolds through works incorporating film reels and the iconic movie clapboard, manipulated, diverted, and staged by the artist. These elements, emblematic of cinematic language, become narrative devices in their own right, extending the interplay between still and moving images, between fabrication and illusion. True to his practice, Levalet plays with space, scale, and situations. He introduces a subtle, sometimes absurd distance into these popular references, quietly revealing our own mechanisms of projection and identification. With Clap, the artist offers above all a playful and deeply personal vision of cinema. By reappropriating its codes and mythologies, he creates a singular universe where his own imagination intertwines with that of the viewer. In speaking about his cinema, Levalet ultimately speaks about ours — about the shared images that shape our narratives, our projections, and, ultimately, our relationship to the world and to society.