Centre Combi Douche

The installation Centre Combi Douche by Jacques Halbert immediately plays on a title that is both evocative and humorous, diverting and parodying the name of the Centre Pompidou.

Composed of cabins made from flexible canvases and stretched painted canvases created by the artist, the work unfolds as six spaces evoking shower stalls, here arranged facing the Loire River. Visual access to their interiors is partially obstructed: some cabins can only be seen through eyelets integrated into the canvases, recalling shower curtains.

These devices establish an ambiguous play of vision, between voyeurism and staging, evoking both the voyeurism of the confessional and a playful dimension. This process echoes the practices of Marcel Duchamp and Jean Dupuy, in a logic of wink and détournement.

Each cabin is thus punctured with an eyelet allowing a fragment of the work to be glimpsed, each time revealing a singular detail that is at once hidden and offered to the gaze.