The exhibition “tout geste est renversement” by Laurianne Bixhain (lives and works in Luxembourg) invites visitors into a multi- layered assemblage: a series of photographs that seem to float in sterile aluminum frames, text fragments in clusters on the walls and vibrating metal plate from which overlapping voices rise. These elements gradually combine to form a fabric of motifs that allow image, word and sound to flow into one another.

In her work, Laurianne Bixhain deals with the mechanical processes of mass production. Glass and diamonds in particular are the focus of her images, which are less concerned with documenting the production process as such than with showing the changes in the materials and objects in the various stages of production and in the frenetic movement of the machines. The cool colors of the industrial equipment and the dissolving contours of the products create new ethereal compositions. The factory becomes a stage of production whose protagonists perform a dizzying dance.

The text fragments by artist Chloe Chignell nestle against the photographs and form clusters. They take up the image motifs on a textual level but transform them into the imaginary and thus dissolve them further. The text takes up the machine rhythm of the sound composition on a formal level. Line breaks mark abrupt sequences of movement, letters and words are punched out and blank spaces form codes, which in turn grow into a melody in the mind of the reader.

The tonal level is expanded by a composition by vocalist Stine Janvin, who transforms a text into a three-part vocal structure. The sound becomes an echo of the images and texts – a further link that connects all the elements in the exhibition.
Central to the exhibition is a large-format portrait in toxic yellow tones showing a woman performing a delicate hand movement. This snapshot comes from the dance performance “Shadow Text” by Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy, inspired by the novel “Les Guérillères” (1969) by Monique Wittig. The special feature of the novel is the use of the French personal pronoun “elles” (German: “you”) as a stylistic device to depict the feminist utopia of an autonomous community of female beings. The black and white contrast of the negative is translated into a yellow and gold color scheme. The reversal creates the impression that the dancer is wearing a mask. In this image, the artist initiates a discourse on the social standardization of binary identity models, reversing them in the spirit of the literary model and transforming them into an open narrative.

Bixhain’s work challenges the common notion of cause and effect between industrial production and human behavior and reverses this relationship: Just as tools shape an object, the finished product in turn influences the shape and use of the tool. Nor is language merely an expression of the body – it shapes and forms it at the same time. In this sense, every movement, every process is a mutual influence, a reciprocal change, a constant interplay of action and reaction. “tout geste est renversement”, or ‘every gesture is reversal’ – a principle that runs through Bixhain’s works as a poetic expression of transformation and exchange.