Les cascades de l’infraréel — Xpo Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 22 → November 10, 2012

Xpo Gallery has given carte blanche to “Les commissaires anonymes” for this group show . Represented and invited artists participate to this new exhibition

To what extent do we wish to master the evolution of the world?

In order to respond to the question, we have dived into the waterfall that is innovation.

Envisage “innovation” as an influential process which consists of rejecting existing social and technological norms and proposing new ones in their place. Taking momentum from the immense progressive juggernaut of production and consumerism, innovation seems to have several driving forces. At times out of control, the desire to innovate requires an element of fantasy as well as experience. “Les Cascades de l’Infraréel” (waterfalls of the infra-real) is situated between the flaws of reason and the twists and turns of uncertainty.
The works presented mark a rupture with conscious reality while remaining anchored in concrete experience. Deliberately operating outside of a competitive system, the artists have responded to challenges which they themselves have set. Irrational and yet very much real, these are not without bearing on the evolution of the world.

Conserving a soap bubble in perpetuity — as we may have played at as a child — reveals the inordinate influence we can have over the destiny of things. Striking an image with the aid of a battering ram is also a way of finding a means for appropriating the representation of the world. To make fish ‘rain’ from the sky, to tame a photocopier, to unveil the secrets of the internet or to grant oneself the power to make a piece of art disappear, are all challenges that the artists presented in the exhibition ‘Les Cascades de l’Infraréel’ wish to take up. How far will they go?

We have observed the obstinacy of these inventors as they transcend reality in order to advance their research. The ‘infra-real’ is the arena of their experience, a space where fantastical fictions transform into the most immediate experimentation, with scant regard for reality. Does illusion count as innovation? Vincent Broquaire, Caroline Delieutraz, Juliette Goiffon and Charles Beauté, Joséphine Kaeppelin, Cédric Quissola, Andrew Friend and Sitraka Rakotoniaina, Paul Souviron and Jan Vorman are betting on it. At the risk of being vain.