From 1976 to 1985, Pascal Nordmann worked as an actor in several theatres and also took part in a number of film projects in Paris. In 1985, he founded his own theatrical group in Germany in Detmold (North-Rhine/Westphalia): the Chairos Theatre. From then on and until 1994, he directed all of the plays presented. In 1992, he launched the International Street Festival – Detmolder Bildstörung – (Image Interferences).

Also in 1992, he produced his first book “Incidents de Frontières”, published by Editions Metropolis – Geneva, and this was followed by other publications in 1995 “Dans les Entrepôts du Sommeil” and 1997 “Sarah l’amour”. Although, however, his work seemed to focus firmly on literary concerns, in 1999 he also turned to mobile plastics.

With Macha Makaieff, another figure of the theatrical world, Pascal Nordmann shared with her the same interest for insignificant objects that people our daily lives. But where Makaieff chooses her objects because they are kitsch and highlights them with esthetical rigour, Nordmann is attached to the simplest objects of everyday life, none of which are classified, none arranged in hierarchical order. Beginning with an empty frame, he then uses it as a stage for a dialogue of objects, fragments of literature, mini paintings and movements. The frame also has the function of rendering “sacred” the objects chosen, to mark their entry into the world of art and, therewith, to question the very boundaries of that world.

After a first elevated installation, entitled “Mobile/Immobile”, presented in a Geneva theatre as a personal exhibition, Pascal Nordmann is now back with a display recalling his former activity in organizing a festival of street performances. As a synthesis of his artistic work, “l’Esprit des Lieux” is not only the staging of an installation it also plunges the viewer into a narration with strong surrealistic references. As for the density of the production itself, it is characteristic of the artist’s pronounced taste for rhythm present throughout his work. In wandering from one space to another, almost like going from room to room in an apartment, in fact, the visitor has turned into a world of the mind which questions how one sees things just as writing makes it possible to root them durably in history.

On the basis of simple, rudimentary engines, Nordmann creates machines which not only bring the entire exhibition to life but which also seem to have a mind of their own. While they allow themselves to be seen with humour, at the same time that they display a fierce tendency for self-analysis all the better to escape us, to lead us on the wrong track.