Julia Rometti & Victor Costales — El perspectivista Part I — Jousse Entreprise — Art contemporain — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 6 → May 18, 2013

The artistic duo of Julia Rometti (b. 1975) and Victor Costales (b. 1974) has been working together since 2007. Adopting the role of self-taught archaeologists and eccentric tourists in wanderlust, Rometti & Costales engage in wide-ranging research activities that takes them into archives, libraries, and used bookstores to venture through broad fields of knowledge, from literature through history, and certain areas of scientific thought.

As photographs, slide projections, and collages have assumed greater roles in their practice, so the material presence of each work has been pared and honed to its most elemental state where the amateur and the trained eye share the same viewpoint to allow the subject of their investigations to take the forefront and construct a window into an amplified view of the world. Rometti & Costales’ interests in systems of classification and methods of research in particular, it is informed by the theoretical writings of authors that range from Walter Benjamin to Roland Barthes, who granted a crucial role to the photographic camera as both source and subject of investigation. However, their work is equally informed by literature and a range of anonymous authors who they have encountered in various cities that have served as ground for their portable production and offered compelling registers to their investigation into the structural operation of human curiosity and invention.