Fly me to the Moon — Une proposition de Franck Ancel — Marie Cini Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 9 → July 16, 2011

Fifty years after man first orbited earth we now live in a global world. This year marks the centennial of theoretician Marshal McLuhan’s birth in 1911. Yet he would not know of this techno-scientific evolution without having questions in return. The recent fictional film MOON serves as a major influence for Franck Ancel’s proposal. In any installation-performance-edition there is a foundation where practice and theory together unfurl at ground zero, a “zerography,” post-scenography. Stemmed from generations of artists, Franck Ancel initiated the very concept where the gallery is no longer just a “white cube” for contemporary art or a “black box” for technological art, but an invisible 360°.

Collectif Artilect, “Mémoires de lune”, 2011

Mechanical drawings on Vinci paper by touch-sensitive table
Since its beginnings, earth has been marked with footprints left by meteorites, volcanoes and by its own magnetic force. Thanks to science, these traces, memories of our distant past, allow us to better understand where we come from. In the past rare and few, these traces we collectively and individually, voluntarily and unknowingly leave, undergo a staggering proliferation. The core of our memory and its implications on our society lead the very formation of the technological machines created by this Toulouse group.

Heinz Mack, “Zero-rocket (close-up)” & “Zero-rocket”, 1964/2011

Together with Otto Piene, Heinz Mack founded the ZERO movement in 1957. He has exhibited his work at the Documenta in 1964 and 1977 and represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale. He is best known for his contributions to Op Art, light art and kinetic art. Mack was born in 1931 from a small German village. Between 1950 and 1956, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The international ZERO movement included Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Jean Tinguely. His work has been shown in more than 300 solo exhibitions.

Hugo Pernet, “Sans titre”, 2010

Sans titre 2010 is a digital collage composed of an official photo of Youri Gagarine, first man to travel in space, cut diagonally in two by a black triangle. The collage evokes the ambivalence of this breathtaking propaganda image, but also recalls the secret surrounding the orbital flight and its existential presumptions. “As an adolescent, I keep in my wallet photos of poets I loved (Trakl, Rimbaud, Holderlïn, Novalis, Daumal, Gilbert-Lecomte, Lautréamont). I could have some of these photos.”

Magali Sanheira, “Making Circle”, 2010

Action drawing, charcoal on Vinci paper and sound recording, 250 × 190 cm
Magali Sanheira draws inspiration from the history of language, its literature and myths, but also from its materiality and resonance, to create installations where the implementation of the sculptural process is valued by the choice of forms and the impact of the aural force. […] It is the overall approach and the artistic engagement of Magali Sanheira that comes to materialize by a systematic, formulated logic, in the tortuous folds of language and of its psychological and audible devices .

Vlf, “Fond rouge”, 2011

Fond rouge is the representation of a fictional nation, a visual response to artistic and economic questions in Europe.

Thomas Cristiani (born in Paris in 1986) and Antoine Roux (born in Paris in 1987) have worked together since 2006.

Franck Ancel was born in France in 1970. With twenty years of experience as an artist and in artistic theory, his vision and practice still keep intact a freshness, even when confronted to the authenticity of certain beings and spaces.