Michel Platnic

Behind the Stage:

Video Art Works:

PLATNIC in this new project is turning his attention towards the work of EGON SCHIELE, and clearly in doing so, he is deepening his approach of the enigma of identity because SCHIELE’s work often deals with the representation of the alter ego, the double, be it through self-portraits or the apparition of fictional twins.

Psychoanalysis throughout its history has consistently attempted to think the question of identity.

Emerging from the mystery of the origin, identity has been described by successive generations of authors as fundamentally fragmented. Sexuality, which lies at the core of identity, is seen as originally polymorphous and multifaceted. Identity and sexuality are understood as reflections of the chaos from which mankind’s psyche emerges.

Jacques Lacan when he formulated the concept of the mirror stage showed that the baby discovers the unicity of his body and his persona when he sees himself in the mirror, however this discovery which inaugurates the emergence of identity is the product of the vision of a reflection, a double. Identity is born double.

In many ways, Platnic’s confrontation with the work of EGON SCHIELE creates such an encounter. The spectator is faced with an unknown aspect of himself through the animated discovery of known works and this reminds him of the familiar/unfamiliar meeting with his own reflection in the mirror. The selection of works chosen by PLATNIC illustrates the role identity in its complexity plays in EGON SCHIELE’s “weltanschauung” (understanding of the world). Lastly this confrontation leads Michel PLATNIC to a deepening of his thinking on the question of identity and its quintessential undefinability, this at a moment in contemporary history when many in the arts as well as in politics fall in the trap of seeing identity as defining when in fact it remains, as it has always been, an illusion.

Extract from a text by Daniel Milman

Photographic Works:

Video: Documentation about the project influenced by Schiele - 2020

Video of Opening and Performance - March 2020 - Paris - Marais126 - Michel Platnic - Curator: Lara Sedbon and Raphael Durazzo