[Blancage] - Entry No. 01 — Beneath the Gutter

Concarneau - Blancage n°01 - La Grâce d’OZE — (c) Fabrice Laudrin 2025

[French]

La Grâce d’OZE

Concarneau, 2025

residues of black marker (10 cm)

Description

For several months, a tiny vertical blaze — OZE — remained inscribed in black marker beneath a gutter on the seaward side. Height: 10 cm.

A discreet, almost timid tag whose verticality formed three thin strokes, closer to a notation than to a graphic act.

A municipal erasure, carried out with a standard white roller paint, attempted to suppress the trace.The marker pigment, saturated by saline humidity, resisted.The paint adhered unevenly.

What emerged was an involuntary silhouette, small yet immediately legible:a geometric bust, a squared head, a vertical presence.

Through a phenomenon of visual anthropomorphism, the form irresistibly evokes a miniature Grace Jones — flat-top hair, angular body, dancing stance.

This silhouette does not have the height of a body;

it has the height of an omission.

Erased : OZE

A name reduced to three letters, each 2 cm high, vertical, obstinate.

Erased by overpainting.

Remained: the Grace of OZE

A figure born of erasure —10 cm of persistence,a ghost diva beneath a gutter, the result of a bureaucratic misfire.

Analysis

The (involuntary) piece illustrates several constants of urban erasure:

1. Chemical resistance of markers.  

The pigment darkens the underlying layer and refuses the white coat.Erasure becomes a producer of form.

2. Induced anthropomorphism.  

The brain projects the figure: here, the flat-top hair and the presence of Grace Jones.

3. Municipal palimpsest.  

An administrative overcoating transforms a tag into a silhouette.The administration inadvertently creates a portrait.

4.  Law of the Active Palimpsest (LPA).

Erasure does not cancel; it stratifies. OZE disappears, but gives birth to its own ideal:a deliberate body, a diva, a radiant figure.

5. Aesthetics of shadow.  

In the manner of the Hiroshima shadows evoked by Ernest Pignon-Ernest —not through tragic memorialisation, but through accidental miniaturisation. Here, the bomb is the roller.The explosion is the hurried gesture.The trace is the failed adhesion.

Statut dans la collection

Catalogue : "Blancage"

.Section : Figures Born of Erasure

Numéro : 01

Titre interne : La Grâce d’OZE (10 cm)

Localisation : Concarneau, Ville Close, beneath a northern gutter.

The piece is regarded as a typical example of a form generated by mistake, and a major marker for understanding how, in coastal cities, erasure becomes a second graffiti — the one produced by the administration itself.