Ingrid Luche
They kill you with cotton
17 Apr - 22 Jun 2019
INGRID LUCHE
They kill you with cotton
17 April - 22 June 2019
Ingrid Luche’s Ghost Dresses are part of a series of sculptures begun in 2011. Made to be hung, the garments are soft, bodiless sculptural forms. The (Californian) Ghost Dresses series were shown at the Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles in December 2018 is a group of fabric sculptures suspended from a support structure for photo studio backdrops. This makes the object itself a display system and an outsize clothes rack which, being mobile, pops up and moves about inside the white space of the gallery. Seemingly available – ready to be put back on and maybe embodied – these dresses were conceptualised in California and produced in Paris. They’re all about the poses and prefabricated discourses – and their expression in reality – that model individual behaviour and sculpt groups. Their origin is retinal and memetic and this is why I’d like to bring the concept of blink to bear on these works.
Blink is simultaneously the glance, the wink and the flutter of the eyelid which seem to me one of the visual modes Luche tests out for capturing the social and media phenomena turned into images that roam our streets and screens. Captured, available, ready to be made use of, these images embellish the empty – in the sense of uninhabited – forms of the sculptures making up the Californian series. Blink is the way I see Luche looking at the social phenomena that circulate on the networks (statements and posturings), on television (news 24/7), in the movies (bogus heroism) and in our cities (brands and niche stores): an outsider’s scrutiny of the details of a world for sale and endlessly reformulated ideological merchandising.
The series is constructed from a corpus of objects and images collected by the artist during her travels in California: a burning house (seen on TV), a mural of Arnold Schwarzenegger (spotted in the street), disposable headphones (from a plane trip), a photo of a Richard Prince print of a canyon in the desert (gigantic, seen at LACMA), and a screenshot of a video by woman bodybuilder and species activist Nasim Najafi Aghdam, who shot up YouTube headquarters and then committed suicide. Her stated reason was changes to YouTube’s payment policy regarding her channels: she claimed 15,000 followers and challenged her downgrading. The burning house, Nasim Aghdam, Schwarzenegger and Richard Prince’s deserts became all-over fabric patterns; the headphones and sunglasses picked up here and there are source materials brought together as networks of signs and textures to provide jewel-like ornaments on these images. The images and objects are folded, opened out and transformed. The Prince photo becomes an enormous pleated skirt belted with chains and goodies; turned upside down, the house on fire is a decorative pattern stripped of its realism; and Schwarzie’s a shawl. These displacements, these signs and forms are all the more surprising in that they stick to the thwarted model of individual desire (formulated, honed, submissive) and waiting (permanently hanging fire and dependent on a media institution that is itself disembodied). The use of 100% Spandex imitation leather is a reflection of this unstable, unbalanced relation-projection.
Ingrid Luche explained to me that she was interested in production issues in both art and society: «Current life models are paradoxical and I’m drawn to the ambivalence and the sociological territories that fuel them. At one and the same time they produce fascination and its opposite, like a veganism based entirely on disposability. This checks out in attitudes and lifestyles. Nasim Aghdam is a hyper-powerful example of this kind of social network self-destruction.»
Marie Canet, November 2018.
Ingrid Luche was born in 1971 in Antibes. She lives and works in Paris and teaches at Ensa in Bourges. Since her study years at the Villa Arson school of art near Nice she has been exploring the sensory perception of architecture and public spaces and its recreation via sculpture, photography and site-specific installations. Ingrid Luche’s works disconcert: in her sculptures and installations the viewer recognises the everyday functional forms she takes her inspiration from, but those forms are marked out by a gap that is none other than the one separating reality from dream. The spaces she creates in her exhibitions are remanences of places passed through and permeated with a now unconscious experience.Her work has been exhibited in institutions in France and abroad. Her work has been acquired by public collections in France and Europe, among them MuZEE, Ostende, Belgium and Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany.
The title of the exhibition is an extract from the quote “There they kill you by ax, here they kill you with cotton”, from Nasim Najafi Aghdam to compare Iranian and American methods.
With the support of Recherche/production artistique from Centre national des arts plastiques, France.
They kill you with cotton
17 April - 22 June 2019
Ingrid Luche’s Ghost Dresses are part of a series of sculptures begun in 2011. Made to be hung, the garments are soft, bodiless sculptural forms. The (Californian) Ghost Dresses series were shown at the Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles in December 2018 is a group of fabric sculptures suspended from a support structure for photo studio backdrops. This makes the object itself a display system and an outsize clothes rack which, being mobile, pops up and moves about inside the white space of the gallery. Seemingly available – ready to be put back on and maybe embodied – these dresses were conceptualised in California and produced in Paris. They’re all about the poses and prefabricated discourses – and their expression in reality – that model individual behaviour and sculpt groups. Their origin is retinal and memetic and this is why I’d like to bring the concept of blink to bear on these works.
Blink is simultaneously the glance, the wink and the flutter of the eyelid which seem to me one of the visual modes Luche tests out for capturing the social and media phenomena turned into images that roam our streets and screens. Captured, available, ready to be made use of, these images embellish the empty – in the sense of uninhabited – forms of the sculptures making up the Californian series. Blink is the way I see Luche looking at the social phenomena that circulate on the networks (statements and posturings), on television (news 24/7), in the movies (bogus heroism) and in our cities (brands and niche stores): an outsider’s scrutiny of the details of a world for sale and endlessly reformulated ideological merchandising.
The series is constructed from a corpus of objects and images collected by the artist during her travels in California: a burning house (seen on TV), a mural of Arnold Schwarzenegger (spotted in the street), disposable headphones (from a plane trip), a photo of a Richard Prince print of a canyon in the desert (gigantic, seen at LACMA), and a screenshot of a video by woman bodybuilder and species activist Nasim Najafi Aghdam, who shot up YouTube headquarters and then committed suicide. Her stated reason was changes to YouTube’s payment policy regarding her channels: she claimed 15,000 followers and challenged her downgrading. The burning house, Nasim Aghdam, Schwarzenegger and Richard Prince’s deserts became all-over fabric patterns; the headphones and sunglasses picked up here and there are source materials brought together as networks of signs and textures to provide jewel-like ornaments on these images. The images and objects are folded, opened out and transformed. The Prince photo becomes an enormous pleated skirt belted with chains and goodies; turned upside down, the house on fire is a decorative pattern stripped of its realism; and Schwarzie’s a shawl. These displacements, these signs and forms are all the more surprising in that they stick to the thwarted model of individual desire (formulated, honed, submissive) and waiting (permanently hanging fire and dependent on a media institution that is itself disembodied). The use of 100% Spandex imitation leather is a reflection of this unstable, unbalanced relation-projection.
Ingrid Luche explained to me that she was interested in production issues in both art and society: «Current life models are paradoxical and I’m drawn to the ambivalence and the sociological territories that fuel them. At one and the same time they produce fascination and its opposite, like a veganism based entirely on disposability. This checks out in attitudes and lifestyles. Nasim Aghdam is a hyper-powerful example of this kind of social network self-destruction.»
Marie Canet, November 2018.
Ingrid Luche was born in 1971 in Antibes. She lives and works in Paris and teaches at Ensa in Bourges. Since her study years at the Villa Arson school of art near Nice she has been exploring the sensory perception of architecture and public spaces and its recreation via sculpture, photography and site-specific installations. Ingrid Luche’s works disconcert: in her sculptures and installations the viewer recognises the everyday functional forms she takes her inspiration from, but those forms are marked out by a gap that is none other than the one separating reality from dream. The spaces she creates in her exhibitions are remanences of places passed through and permeated with a now unconscious experience.Her work has been exhibited in institutions in France and abroad. Her work has been acquired by public collections in France and Europe, among them MuZEE, Ostende, Belgium and Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany.
The title of the exhibition is an extract from the quote “There they kill you by ax, here they kill you with cotton”, from Nasim Najafi Aghdam to compare Iranian and American methods.
With the support of Recherche/production artistique from Centre national des arts plastiques, France.