Pierre Ardouvin — Przemek Matecki — Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood — Progress Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 24 → July 19, 2014

Pierre Ardouvin ★ Przemek Matecki: Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood

Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood is an exhibition in the form of an installation: as soon as they enter the gallery, visitors find themselves in a total environment, an « urban forest » where the works of Pierre Ardouvin and Przemek Matecki mix, interact, and resonate with each other. Because of its specific layout, Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood* alternately underlines the formal differences and affinities between the artistic explorations of Pierre Ardouvin and Przemek Matecki, giving concrete form to the image of a dialogue between cultures.

The art of Pierre Ardouvin is sometimes so obvious that it becomes completely uncertain. His works are made of simple materials: prosaic and banal objects. He makes contemporary society’s “rubbish” into the raw material for mysterious artworks woven from dissonance and discrepancy.
Pierre Ardouvin’s apparently random and humorous approach throws us off the scent, challenging and scuppering the most contradictory, fraught, awkward subjects relating to today’s society.

Przemek Matecki is fascinated by fashion magazines and by the strange mixture of portraits of celebrities and nameless faces that punctuate their pages. He draws his raw material—hybrid identities that haunt his imagination—from glossy magazines.
The art of Przemek Matecki is characterised by a form of duplicity: his images offer both an exquisitely « dark » critical perspective on reality, and a new way of looking at it. They suggest a “better world” rebuilt from fragments torn from reality. Radical and experimental, his works touch on pornography, celebrity gossip, and politics, and have no qualms about venturing into kitsch and vulgarity. They constantly put the simplest aspects of contemporary culture to the test, bringing a new form of non-academic sensitivity to painted images.