Les Vitrines - Valentin Vert « Best Before »

Best Before by Valentin Vert addresses conservation in a toxic world in which poison has become part of our environment.

Best Before is a solo exhibition by Valentin Vert in the showcases of the Institut français Berlin - revolves around the topic of conservation: of data in energy-intensive structures, of works of art under strict conditions and of parts of living life - especially animal and human species - that have to survive in the rubble of capitalism, where poison is no longer an external enemy, but has become part of our environment.

Um To give shape to these challenges, the artist has created a series of sculptures whose cylindrical, vertical forms are inspired by the technique of core extraction. Each sculpture contains mercury - a chemical element that can visualize pressure and temperature - both a thermometer for bodies and an indicator of climate change. As storage objects as well as measuring instruments, they function as hybrid tools at the interface between laboratory and museum. With their sealed appearance and symbolic charge, they embody modern relics that carry both buried data and the prophetic signs of a possible future.

The sculptures enter into dialogue with a corpus of archive images that the artist has freely cropped and edited. A multitude of interwoven stories unfold: Promethean stories of mercury extraction, the production of cinnabar from the metal and its use in painting from Pompeii to Cézanne, industrial megalomania to the devastation of the Bay of Minamata. Tragic fables of cats going mad after eating contaminated fish are juxtaposed with stories of people whose facial features freeze under the influence of the poison.

Through a double play of scales - from the microscopic dimension of chemical reactions to the global reach of an international agreement banning the metal - Valentin Vert explores the connections between the infinitely small and global dynamics. In addition, there is a temporal stratification: ancient stories and contemporary dramas respond to each other and draw a rhizomatic network in which social, economic and scientific dimensions are equally intertwined.

As the exhibition questions our ability to live with the toxic residue of a destroyed world and to find healing, it ends with the protocols for the treatment and detoxification of the works themselves. In the subtext, Best Before: the pressing question of our ecological expiry date.