Frictions
Steven Le Priol
26 de Junio > 26 de Julio 2008
a) Fast, strong and repeated rubbings against a body part for therapeutic purposes (in order to ease skin absorption of medicine or to increase the local blood circulation).
b) A force that resists the relative motion or tendency to such motion of two bodies in contact.
c) Conflicts, as between persons having dissimilar ideas or interests; clash.
If the word friction might imply contact, it implies it more in terms of roughness than in terms of shift. This also suggests that each body put in contact leaves a little bit of itself in this operation. If there are limits, they do not designate the shift zone from one body to another but clearly the one where their mutual resistance to the penetration is occurring ; The limits are becoming what they were : borders, trenches, barricades.
« La perruque » 2005/2007
Serie of drawings on paper A4, variant techniques
This serie of drawings is based on an old industrial tradition. The aim of this working practice, which appeared in the 19th century, was to conceive different type of objects for the worker at the expenses of the factory. Thus, every single drawing was done during working time, « stolen » from the employer on paper « borrowed » from copiers and printers. Beyond the diversion of the economical flux, the neatness and punctiliousness of these drawings lead us to observe an economy of boredom, a hoax facing the alienation of an alimentary job and a way to thwart the requirements of productivity. If in the series of drawings on letterhead of the greatest hotels, Martin Kippenberger was giving us a vision of a glamorous and migrant artist, here we can witness the disenchanted version of a motionless practice, conditioned by economical and financial constraints.
« La série rose » 2006/2007
Pink colored papers cut, framed on white background, different sizes
The cutting technique allows the line to physically exist. It becomes a thin filled area, trapped between two empty areas. The cut “shape-object” exists in its own corporeality, thus permitting to outstrip the concept of drawing in order to approach the one of the ground. This group of rose coloured and thorough cuttings borrows the aesthetic of the “ouvrages des dames” while creating a discord between the substance and the form. The subjects, based on features stories, domestic or historical violence, flirt with the conjunct strength of cruelty and “déja-vu”. This distance between the medium and the subject underlines the humour imbued in this scene, just as if the “bucolic landscapes” and the “hunting scenes” of an embroidery collection had been replaced by massacres, human trade, car crashes, road accidents and other forms of violence.
« Les chinois » 2008
Group of sculptures in painted mineral resin, variable dimensions
Just as the “pink serie” borrows from the aesthetic of the woman’s work, “the Chinese” are borrowing from the porcelain register. The reason why these volumes adopt the whiteness of the porcelain, it is also to explore a field of expression that extends from the purely decorative figure to the Genre works. Here again, the aim is to substitute the classic “ballerinas” or “hunters”, for scenes taken from horror movie pictures or Satanism and, to some extend, to dally about decorative arts by replacing “meaning” with “intelligible”, “relevance” with “charm”. The title “The Chinese” comes from the English word “China” which can both mean the country and the porcelain. Therefore, the low price sculptures that can be found in the chinese bazaar are both “made in china” and “made of china”, and this reference is the only element remaining from a process initiated by the observation of those kitschy simulacra. At the end of the process, the only thing left is not porcelain, nor “chineese-esque” work, just “The Chinese”, with all their fatuity.
