The installations by Sonia Kacem (1985, Geneva) are marked by careful attention to materials and the exhibition setting. Recently returned from a residency in New York, she created works in a room on the third floor dedicated to Donald Judd that evoked the Minimalist radicalness of a primary structure and its theatrical extension into space. But the austere, elementary geometry was eroded by the motifs nudging it toward camping, county fairs, snack booths, and trinket shops. For Kacem’s residency in the US also afforded her the opportunity to visit Las Vegas. Here, following in the steps of Venturi and Scott Brown, she learned that the literalism of form lapses into monumental pastiche. The pyramids in Loulou, named after the heroine’s parrot in Gustave Flaubert’s short story “A Simple Heart,” are less inspired by the 
Giza pyramids than by the kitsch aesthetic of the giant Luxor Las Vegas casino hotel, an Orientalist fantasy 
filtered through the land of extravaganza.