Mathieu Weiler — Demande à la Poussière / Ask the dust — Laure Roynette Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 16 → April 30, 2017

« Ask the dust » is based on these phrase by Yves Klein : “Whereas I sculpted fire and water and fire and water, I have drawn paintings”. Yves Klein, The Manifesto of the Hotel Chelsea, 1961.

History of Art’s series is a project consisting of a video where Ernst H. Gombrich’s History of Art is consumed and a set of 9 drawings showing the traces of the burning of the works presented in the book.

In the myth of Prometheus, Prometheus gives fire to man, a symbol of knowledge. The book is also an object of knowledge. In his encounter with fire there is a kind of tautology, a clash between two pieces of knowledge to produce a new one.

The action to give fire to man may also be perceived as an act of rebellion in relation to the Gods of Olympus. Prometheus will also be punished by the gods for having given the sacred fire to man.

Burning a book is a taboo act and it can be likened as a iconoclastic gesture , but what matters to Mathieu Weiler is more about the recording of the imprint of fire, modification, mutation, of the desire to tap into the force of nature to carry out an act of transformation and recreation.

The other set of dessins show us ordinary objects . At the center, Capital of Karl Marx, also burent by fire. These objects, isolated from their context, on a black paper, become simple shapes (rectangle, circle …) These are contemporary vanities. Michael Jackson’s Vinyl twisted by heat is a circle, The Capital of Karl Marx a rectangle … The series fire’s paintings show us the flame’s evolution from its appearence to its disappearence. The exhibition shows, at the last, two larges formats representing two essential elements: The water and the air.

«Feu things to capt mon attention : a concrete cube, a pile of sand, un obtect found on the street… After, I draw the object on a very large (The object is centered, square format), on a white paper : the object is decontextualized and returns to its primary form: circle, square, triangle.

“Working in Chicago, at the Hyde Park Art Center, was a great opportunity for me and allowed me to face a new environment, as I had the chance to do at other residences (Villa Medicis Roma, The Darling Foundry Montreal …) " Mathieu Weiler explores the world of images through his drawings and paintings, he re-explored the kinds of history of art, between figuration and abstraction, black and white and color.