he title of this work is a syntactical reversal of the English term ‘Billboard’, i.e. a board used for advertising, into ‘Board of Bills’, meaning a board used to exhibit debts. For his intervention in Thuin, Jonathan Sullam drew inspiration from the obelisks on which the Egyptians engraved civic codes, telling people how they should behave in public. According to the artist, current billboards aren’t really any different, other than they no longer offer a reading of the code, but impose codes through an image.
A small-sized sculptural installation evoking the billboards found on American highways, this panel bears no advertising. The function of the structure isn’t to support an image, but to be an image. Entirely made from a mirror polished surface, the billboard reflects the Sambre valley and reclaims it. It becomes its landscape in turn.
Very often associated with poetry, landscape is based on a contemplative philosophy. In history of art, it has always been a pretext for the symbolic exteriorisation of a soul-scape.
The installation’s central panel reminds us of a series of tales where the mirror reflects, without deception, certain aspects of our inner universe and its depth. In Jonathan Sullam’s work, the mirror reflects a slightly blurred landscape which the viewer is at liberty to interpret. It is placed on an advertising framework whose function is to seduce and reveal our innermost desires.
