Go tell fire — Dukan Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 2 → 25, 2012

The title of the exhibition Go tell fire takes up the yelled anthem, the rebel scream sung by Wu Lyf, a collective from Manchester, with a wild energy in their latest album (Go tell fire to the mountain, 2011).

These three artists (Arturo Hernández Alcázar, Benoît-Marie Moriceau and Duncan Wylie) with diverse and complementary practices (sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, video) are attentive observers of the economic, politic, social and visual reality that surrounds them. They show a critical position in relation to the system that alienates us and arouse our ability to brutalize it. Making an evaluation of the contextual issues, the starting point of their works can be the rules to build an anti-atomic shelter as well as a trip in Gaza in 2005 or an accumulation of wooden beams disused in a construction site.

They explore, without cynicism, the possibilities of materials, found objects, found images on the Internet, brownfield sites: this recycling is a way to give a new value to what exists; in fact, they suggest an augmented reality.

Following in the footsteps of artists such as Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark or more recently Francis Alÿs, their artistic strategies aim to question the systems of order — when it comes to architecture, space, power or economy — of our contemporary societies and to approach the possibilities of chaos. With a felling of urgency, they work to disrupt, destabilize and reverse what seems to be perennial. They also take a look at History, Duncan Wylie’s painting dealing with the ruin of Zimbabwe since Mugabe came to power and Arturo Hernández Alcázar with Mexico, where might is right.

During this post September 11th decade, where the violence (human or natural) of the world surrounds us, Go tell fire is based on the notion of entropy, as a measurement of the surrounding disorder. Yet, as with the music in convulsions made by Wu Lyf, which eventually exults joy, the works of these three artists also show a humanist, resisting view and in the end creativity: creation is always a product of destruction.

Arturo Hernández Alcázar was born in 1978 in Mexico City where he currently lives and works. He graduated in 2001 from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, La Esmeralda (Mexico City) and has already exhibited internationally.

Benoît-Marie Moriceau was born in 1980 in Poitiers. He lives and works in Rennes. He studied at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Quimper and graduated in 2003.

Duncan Wylie was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1975. He graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1999, he lives and works in France since 1994.