Press review by Pascal Colé

"  The first of the Sets of Irons took place in 1986 in Rouen. "I was then student with the fine arts and I had obtained the possibility of carrying out one of my projects: an iron cage suspended under the vaults of abbey St-Ouen. I made a double of the keys and I returned in the night accompanied by a team of turning. A man was locked up in the cage and precipitated we it 22 times against the steel plate which acted as gong "remembers with recreation Olivier Tarabo.

Now, the Sets of Irons are worked out and are held in public. The witness saunters in the medium of a multitude of steel machines, beautiful, imposing and complex. Mechanisms as could have created of them a brain made up at the same time of the meninges of Léonard de Vinci and those of the Marquis de Sade. Several captivating scenes are superimposed like as many small cruel tales.

Here, a man pains upright on pedals which actuate vertical back and forth passes. There, another flat belly makes swivel an arm of 9 meters length crane which passes very close to the ground by scraping cords of guitars. Further, two harnessed men as gladiateurs clash between two large metal cones which resound under the effect of the projected bodies. With with dimensions, two combatants naked chest compete, captive of a rail which crash to pieces them against a barded wall of cords of piano. The men, simple elements among others, form a unit with the machines designed like mobile and sound sculptures. Left clandestinity, the iron cage, worthy of times of the enquiry is also there. At the interior a naked man moults himself out of percussion instrument living in a deafening din.

During this time, drawn up rats turn their wheel and, by friction, play of the hurdy-gurdy. Dancers split crowd and fall to knees in front of monticules from clay. With full hands, supported by a music enivrante, the dancers overlap with ground. Their bodies become ochre. Long wire of hemp leave their mouths. Their heads are agitated violently. Their backs, their shoulders, their thighs are whipped by the muddy braids. "body palpitating art".

In front of, behind, in top, short-nap cloth of the ground, is played a tragedy alarming and moving. The spectacle is total. Everywhere, the man is represented in a very primitive form, small wheel of an insane world, craftsman of his own suffering "