When Aki Ikemura puts the cosmos in a box, it is certainly not a feat of performance. A sticker with a starry-night motif, stuck on a small crate or on the wall of a living room, is enough for the young artist to invert the proportions of the infinite. At the same time the sublime becomes cheap, or the universe cosy, without ceasing to be inaccessible or dreamlike, for like a trompe-l'œil the sticker acts as a fictitious window or a secret tunnel. It is impossible to take it except by roundabout means: slowness, discretion, gentleness, qualities that make up the weave of Ikemura's universe. One has to press one's eye to a peephole screwed into the wall to glimpse a kind of little white man; and Étoiles/étoile, a film, seems to stage nothing but the spectacle of the galaxy with two motionless figures in the foreground. A praise of slowness, this video loop is not stuck on pause, since tiny dots accumulate and take the shape of a star; their movement is simply imperceptible and the metamorphosis ephemeral. Text by Judicaël Lavrador.