The black numeral refers to the difference in subjectivity between two opposing forces. For example, discrepancies between estimates of the number of participants in a demonstration, from the point of view of the organizer or law enforcement. Between fantasy and rationalism, these figures ultimately prove to be false since they are based on an unknown. It is to these unknowns that this exhibition is attacked.

The exhibition Le Chiffre Noir by Nicolas Daubanes is not a pleasure boat. Quite the contrary. The subjects treated by the artist are neither beautiful nor light. And yet. In his practice, Nicolas Daubanes confronts the strongest or most fragile materials that are created from fire. For this solo exhibition at the Drawing Lab, concrete, glass, ceramics, iron filings (signature)... are works that carry stories that question us in our relationship with the past and the collective memory.

In the video Society you will not have me!, Nicolas Daubanes plunges the viewer into the prison world of a prisoner for life. Of this life as a prisoner, the artist reveals nothing but on the contrary gives to see a moment of virtual escape. It is in a video game that the inmate can still give himself the illusion of walking, walking, running and making decisions alone that lead to immediate action. Having become voyeurs of an ultimately intimate scene, we discover the antagonistic relationship between freedom and prison, dream and reality, power and constraint. The video game game is the refuge of social exclusion, just as the concrete cell becomes a space of safety and protection, for all.

This concrete, which founds the thickest walls, Nicolas Daubanes manufactures, builds and weakens it by adding sugar, this gesture of the resistance fighters of the Second World War who insidiously sabotaged the Atlantic Wall by slipping sugar into the concrete mixers. From a protective architectural element, concrete becomes a support for revolt and indignation. What happens behind these concrete walls is silent, inaudible. Yet the artist gives to read these cries of revolt, fear or horror of history. If we think that some things are hard to say, then maybe giving them to read makes them easier to accept? Concrete can form ramparts, bunkers to protect against attacks, or prisons. These prisons can be those in which individuals of Justice are held, but also those of injustice.

So, in these walls, there are sometimes some openings that allow a view of the outside. As a dream of escape, a memory or a last hope, Nicolas Daubanes makes the closed prison doors transparent and Persian the reinforced concrete walls to draw windows. From these windows, one can see forests drawn with steel powder directly on the windows themselves. An absence of depth that gives the feeling of having your nose stuck on the window, of being a prisoner of nature. The oxidized filings reveal some elements of an orange, almost blood-red color, and the shades of gray make the menacing trees immersed in a milky mist that constitute images similar to archival photographs. These forests that the artist gives to contemplate are those that surround the former concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, created in 1941 in Alsace, which held more than 52,000 prisoners and killed nearly 17,000 people.

But Le Chiffre Noir is also a message of hope and indignation. The Parisian pavement gives way to the ceramic brick marked with hot iron filings. This brick is deformed on its stops, leaving the imprints of the hand that grabbed it before it was dry. The gesture of the craftsman is also that of the actor, the awakened informed who reacts to his story. This is what Nicolas Daubanes questions in his exhibition: he makes this deaf cry visible through art. Everyone keeps in mind the heavy burden of preserving the memory of past "acts": transmitting so as not to be forgotten and become simple numbers.