Decollages — Volet 1 : Collage — Florence Loewy — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 14 → February 9, 2012

Décollages — a series of exhibitions about collages … but without the collages ! The issue at stake in this project is not the techniques used as such, but much more the way in which artists today bring together miscellaneous references, borrowing pre-existing shapes and assembling them inside a same space. These past years have seen ways of producing, creating and moving objects and images around (to which the multiplication of digital supports has largely contributed to redefining or blurring the contours), that have given rise to doubt and incertitude as to the nature and veracity of these same objects and images. The artists gathered around this project are participating in this both semantic and physical migration of contemporary shapes. Depending on how they are positioned, what they are covered with, shifting occurs, and fragments appear, opening up a whole new space of representation.

Décollages — Section 1 At the beginning of the collage, which brings together in a same space and time miscellaneous elements, there is a displacement, and this displacement will create disturbance, necessitate adaptation. A good example of this can be found in Fayçal Baghriche’s neon work, La Afham, made, at low cost, in China, by workers who were in total ignorance as to the meaning of the phrase they were being asked to reproduce : “je ne comprends pas” (I don’t understand), in French. The result is a rough interpretation, thus transforming the initial wording into a purely graphic sign.

The tautological nature of this work depends entirely on the perfect collage (merging) of shape and substance. The shape is the substance, and the substance the shape. And it is probably this concurrence between the shape and the concept that renders the approach of the three artists in this section so special. By shifting images away from their initial context, they are emptied of their original meaning. Matthieu Clainchard’s geometrical “pops” works or the minimalist model by Cyril Verde, to name but two, are not simple decorative patterns — as attested to by their titles: Paper work document 7 — Abdo fessiers (Belly and butt workout) for the first, created from a fitness centre programme, and Lecture (Reading), for the second, an interpretation of a Marquis de Sade classic, Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome (The One hundred and Twenty Days of Sodome).

Liberated from any need to respect a hierarchy between academic and popular culture, or divisions between abstract and figurative work, the pieces brought together here resist any formal identification and interpretation. Doubt is of the essence. In fact it is with a touch of humour that the artists take full responsibility for this ambivalence, freed up from any form of academic inertia.

Curated by Solenn Morel.