La doublure du monde (2012)
MIXED TECHNIQUE
Jacques Charlier recreates an installation integrated in 2009 in the reception area of the Parliament of the French-speaking Community in the Hôtel du Greffe (rue de la Loi, Brussels). It responds to man's longstanding fascination with the twofold and the dual. For example, the motif of twins appears several times in biblical and mythological stories. Technical and technological developments have given even more weight to repetition and the desire for an exact copy. The display case in Charlier's installation contains photographs of the Twin Towers, identical twins and other duplicates. The painting in the center - itself a meticulous copy of a staged photograph - pays homage to symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) and his quest for a double of his idealized sister Marguerite. In symbolism, the woman is an important motif as the incarnation of the ambiguous. La doublure du monde is a poetic evocation of the theme of doubleness and ambiguity, and a reflection on a world in which projections, technological interventions and virtual staging predict a copy of reality, but at the same time everything begins to look alike.