Martin Kersels — Disques-o-graphiques (Discs-o-graphs) — Galerie G-P & N Vallois — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 15 → April 21, 2018

The gallery Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois present in both its spaces the work of Julien Berthier, Martin Kersels along with an installation of François Dufrêne.

Even though they do not belong from the same generation nor even the same country, it seems like an evidence to reunite in the same show the californian-based artist Martin Kersels and François Dufrêne, a french artist who belongs as well with the Lettrists as New Realism. The Disc-O-Graphs of Martin Kersels are made with arrangement of pieces of furniture and vinyles ; Dufrêne created in 1964 one of his masterpieces by decomposing into distinct letters (the fundamental principle of Lettrism) the word Mot Nu Mental.

Out of these two ensembles emerges a game of associations of shapes and images, all an exercise in superpositions. There is also a feeling of obsolescence, a desire to make something out of the old, to retrieve what can still exist. There is nothing digital in any of this, as though the 50s and 60s of the previous century met by separate paths. But there is above all a desire to bring together two crucial and outstanding artists, who ceaselessly “turn the tables”, as one would say to shake the codes of propriety. The word “monumental” sticks to them, both literally and figuratively.