(sorry if you missed the show)

“(sorry if you missed the show)”, Pierre Descamps’ last solo exhibition at The Goma gallery, presents a series of exhibition posters of different sizes, such as can be seen in public places or bought in souvenirs shops from museums. This type of poster normally advertises current or upcoming exhibitions in official art institutions. In Pierre Descamps’s work, there is a reversal: the dates displayed have all already passed. On closer inspection, the places where the events take place are never places of art or prestige, but abandoned public places of his city of Berlin where he lives. Each of these posters presents a concentrate of an ephemeral in-situ sculpture work that the artist has been operating illegally in public places since 2015. This panel of small anonymous geometric shapes evoking as much minimalism as brutalist architecture or urban furnitures are discreetly placed in the middle of other urban constructions. The consideration, interpretation or use of these works is left free to residents and passers-by. Sometimes a sculpture will disappear after a few hours, some last for months or even years. The posters give us some clues: the start and end dates, the places, and let us see an image of the still intact sculpture, or sometimes a simple plan of the sculpture that was installed. What happened between the start and the end of the event, in terms of social interactions and physical relationships is left to our imagination, and word of mouth. Some ruins of his sculptures, broken, soiled with tags and skate traces are although installed in the middle of the gallery, testifying that an activity did took place.

A poster in the middle of the others announces this exhibition at the gallery, and makes the connection between all these posters of past unofficial exhibitions and the current official exhibition. We can think that this poster bearing the title of the exhibition “(sorry if you missed the show”), will also take on a more nostalgic and mysterious tone, once this exhibition has passed. What will have happened in terms of exchanges, discussions and meetings will remain in the memories of the present people.