실비 아이베르는 아티스트에게 거장과도 같은 버지니아 울프의 일기 구절에서 이 에디션의 제목을 가져왔습니다. 울프와 프루스트, 그리고 아이베르 자신으로 이어진 나비의 나날들에 대한 이 은유는 단순한 인용이나 참조를 넘어, 모든 텍스트와 이미지가 서로 얽혀 있다는 ‘상호텍스트성’을 드러냅니다. 기존 인쇄 매체를 탐구해 글자와 단어, 이미지의 파편을 선별하고 시적이고 수수께끼 같은 구성을 선보여 온 작가는 이번 작업에서 영화 잡지의 펼침면을 바탕으로 앙리 랑글루아, 장뤽 고다르, 프랑수아 트뤼포, 오시마 나기사의 영화적 역사 위에 울프의 문장들을 음각으로 조각해 배치합니다. 지면 위에서 공간화된 단어들은 숨겨진 텍스트처럼 일어서며, 텍스트와 이미지가 빚어내는 끊임없고 불가분한 상호작용을 보여줍니다.

Sylvie Eyberg discovered the title of this edition in the writings of Virginia Woolf, a central figure for the artist. In a passage of her diary, the British author praised Marcel Proust for “his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity, [searching out] these butterfly shades to the last grain.” In fact, Eyberg would probably say as much to describe the writings of Woolf. And we in turn could say the same about Eyberg’s precise work, so much so that the metaphor appears to work like a Russian doll.

Yet, quoting Woolf and therefore Proust is not really a matter of “reference,” in the sense of calling in inspirational figures and borrowing some of their power. Rather, it points out a certain notion of “intertextuality,” the idea that any text is filled with other texts to which they relate in various ways, deliberately or not. Sylvie Eyberg’s visual and literary practice indeed consists of exploring existing printed material and carefully selecting letters, words, and fragments of images which she reconfigures freely to form lyrical and enigmatic compositions.

For these butterfly shades, the artist reveals, using double-page spreads of a film magazine as a base, the presence of Woolf’s words in paragraphs otherwise dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Nagisa Oshima. Carved into the pages, the letters line up to form words and then sentences that recreate fragments of her writings, like a hidden subtext. Not only do the words become visual through their spatialization on the page, but they are also penetrated by the history of cinema, thus showing the inextricable, inexhaustible interplay of text and image.

Offset printing

Folded: 17.5 × 26 cm
Unfolded: 69.6 × 52 cm

Edition of 50 copies numbered and stamped-signed by the artist, plus 3 artist’s proofs, 3 publisher’s proofs and 10 hors-commerce copies