Denis Savary, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, video, sound, 8’53”, loop, 2024
Blood on the Dining-Room Floor borrows its title to Gertrude Stein’s first detective novel, written after the successful Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. As she lived recluse with her partner, Alice, in the French village of Bilignin, Stein started writing this novel, inspired by the various events and intrigues of the small hamlet daily life. Her country house then becomes a location from which Stein could observe this microcosm filled with underlying violence. With this video, Savary looks back to a specific period in his work, in the beginning of the 2000s, when he was producing videos mostly from or within the immediate environment of his family home in Vaud. Realized in miniDV, a bygone production mean, these videos represent an era where the house worked as a studio and as a vantage point overlooking the world. Curiously, amongst the miniature houses of the Villa series, the one chosen for Blood on the Dining-Room Floor is the one which looks the most similar to the artist’s old house.
The video is accompanied by an eponym sound piece, a work commissioned to the artists composers Maria Esteves and Mathilde Hansen. The sound and the image are merged and seem to be out of sync, as a dance off the beat. Progressively, the house’s motion slows down, and reveals the complexity of a mutli-track House sound from which emerges a voice that chants extract from Gertrude Stein’s novel. The video dissimulates a pun, between the musical genre of House music and the main subject of the film, the artist’s childhood house. Set in a rotating movement, the miniature house from the Blood on the Dining-Room Floor video reminds of dance-floor disco balls projecting rays of colored light.
Denis Savary (1981) lives and works in Geneva. His work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, such as : Josy’s Club, with Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Synagogue de Delme, Delme (2023) ; Octogone, avec Chloé Delarue, Mayday, Basel (2023) ; Flower of Fog, GNYP Gallery, Berlin (2022) ; Ithaca, Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich (2021) ; Ambarabà Cicci Cocco, with Alfredo Aceto, Stiftung Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Saint Gall (2021) ; Ventimiglia, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021); Phantom, Lemme, Sion (2021). His many recent group exhibitions include : Temps de Mars, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2024) ; The Big Chill, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2023) ; Mirage, MCBA, Lausanne (2023) ; Deep Deep Down, MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2023) ; The Puppet Show, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (2022) ; Inventaire, Mamco, Geneva (2021) ; Ballard in Albisola, Casa Jorn House, Albisola (2021) ; La Suite – Regards sur les artistes des collections des Frac, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2021) ; Body Double, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London (2021). In 2024, Denis Savary’s work will be the subject of several solo and group exhibitions: Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan ; Denis Savary, Galerie Maria Bernheim, London ; Roma, Roma, Roma, Rolex Learning Center, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. In 2025, he will be exhibited at KBCB Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art, Biel.
This project is supported by Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, Leenaards Foundation and the Office fédérale de la culture, de la République et canton de Genève.
