Le Sens de l'Histoire ou la Grande Réduction
2015
plaster, wood
40 x 80 centimeters
Unique
Le Sens de l’histoire ou la Grande Réduction is a collection of six reproductions of the head of Hygeia, an ancient Greece masterpiece from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens representing the Greek goddess of health. The six casts of this female marble face replicate it on various scales. They are arranged on a shelf in order of size, which emphasizes their differences. The biggest of these heads, from the museum shop in Athens, is probably closest to the original, while the others are scaled-down copies, replicating the model less and less precisely and less and less closely as their size diminishes. Reproduced over and over again to stock the souvenir shops of Athens, the serene and harmonious face of the goddess becomes tangibly distorted with the repeated duplications, suggesting a “distortography” of the divine, according to the artist, the same way that time kicks history around.
Like a collector, Théo Mercier has collected these objects and given them a base; by gathering them, he places these disparate objects on a path going from the sacred to the profane, and traces a great journey through history, going from a pantheon to a contemporary museum of Athens, from archaeology to souvenir shops.
