Julien Audebert
02 - 30 Apr 2011
JULIEN AUDEBERT
Les jeux funeraires
2 – 30 April, 2011
For his second solo exhibition at art: concept, Julien Audebert proposes three new works that bring into play sculpture, cinema and photography.
These works are linked together by their iconographic themes and their sources of inspiration.
Audebert exploits a vast chronological period and reaches across several different domains of social sciences and humanities. The works consist of acts and narratives that draw as much from our contemporary time as from history, Greek mythology, archeology, and Near Eastern antiquities.
The parallels that the artist establishes are equally intuitive and structural, and they not only reveal but also add a layer of fi ction to the body of knowledge produced by these disciplines.
Through juxtaposition, the artist effectively levels the methods, tools, and manners used to explain, represent and bear witness a culture or reexamine an event with hindsight. This allows him to mix together various cultural elements – from Babylon, Ancient Greece and the American Far West – and the possible imagery that can come about: whether it be through writing (in terms of content or components that are either purely visual or plastic), archeological relics, three-dimensional reconstructions, or other pictorial and photographic representations.
The Searchers (1) , which takes its name from the fi lm that was the initial source of inspiration, is the panoramic view of a landscape built from images drawn from the documentary on the making of the fi lm. In Audebert’s cynical vision of the cinematographic process, the fiction that had taken the spotlight now shares the same space and time with the backside of the set: they are both photography, which - through inverted procedures - renders its fi lm techniques and editing procedures invisible. The format enables the public to take in the work as a whole and to gaze horizontally from one piece to the next and from one side of the shot to the other. Finally the focal point draws the spectator into the center of these images.
By applying a metonymical approach to his deconstruction and reconstruction of cinema: the artist tackles the content and the container and questions the making of myths and the collective American imagination.
His sculptures Chant 23 (la course de chars) and Sandbagwal both interweave viewpoints and shift through concentric circles. Chant 23 (la course de chars) is governed by the actions described in a passage from Homer’s Iliad. 70mm fi . 70mm fi lm (a horizontal-scroll cinematographic technique) was lm (a horizontal-scroll cinematographic technique) was chosen as medium for this ancient text. This fi lm is not meant to be projected. If it was, it would only result in a white horizontal line that sparkles for a few seconds. The idea is rather to send the spectator spinning, literally turning in circles like a chariot in a coliseum. Through a sort of mutual accord, the text has become indistinguishable from the fi lm and together they generate their own form: an Archimedean spiral where the grooves have very slight infl ection points at regular intervals which allow for the coiled text in its totality to remain visible.
Inside the Letter (the Clue) (2008) acts as a counterbalance: the spectator must travel through a maze of walls on which Edgar Poe’s The Purloined Letter is scribbled. Here the spectator may onl is scribbled. Here the spectator may only grasp the piece by walking around the text. y grasp the piece by walking around the text.
The third sculpture and the installation in situ Sandbagwal was erected with the impartiality of an anasty was erected with the impartiality of an anastylosis or a military fortifi cation. Audebert losis or a military fortification. Audebert chose to reproduce on a large scale a section of the famous Ishtar Gate ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar II for the inner city of Babylon – and in a totally incongruous material. Irony motivates the artist: this archeological site is in present-day Iraq and has been engulfed by the American military base «Camp Alpha.» In 2007, an article in the newspaper Le Monde (2) disclosed that the military may have fi disclosed that the military may have fi lled sandbags with dirt from this site, lled sandbags with dirt from this site, which is potentially an archeological gold mine. Therefore Audebert interlinks knowledge and fi ction: the ruins of Babylon are potentially shattered in bags grouped together to reconstruct the pattern of a walking lion .
Caroline Soyez-Petithomme, translation Ellen Le Blond-Schrader
1. The Searchers, by John F , by John Ford, 1956 ord, 1956
2. «Quand Babylone s’appelait Camp Alpha,» in Le Monde, August 16, 2007
Les jeux funeraires
2 – 30 April, 2011
For his second solo exhibition at art: concept, Julien Audebert proposes three new works that bring into play sculpture, cinema and photography.
These works are linked together by their iconographic themes and their sources of inspiration.
Audebert exploits a vast chronological period and reaches across several different domains of social sciences and humanities. The works consist of acts and narratives that draw as much from our contemporary time as from history, Greek mythology, archeology, and Near Eastern antiquities.
The parallels that the artist establishes are equally intuitive and structural, and they not only reveal but also add a layer of fi ction to the body of knowledge produced by these disciplines.
Through juxtaposition, the artist effectively levels the methods, tools, and manners used to explain, represent and bear witness a culture or reexamine an event with hindsight. This allows him to mix together various cultural elements – from Babylon, Ancient Greece and the American Far West – and the possible imagery that can come about: whether it be through writing (in terms of content or components that are either purely visual or plastic), archeological relics, three-dimensional reconstructions, or other pictorial and photographic representations.
The Searchers (1) , which takes its name from the fi lm that was the initial source of inspiration, is the panoramic view of a landscape built from images drawn from the documentary on the making of the fi lm. In Audebert’s cynical vision of the cinematographic process, the fiction that had taken the spotlight now shares the same space and time with the backside of the set: they are both photography, which - through inverted procedures - renders its fi lm techniques and editing procedures invisible. The format enables the public to take in the work as a whole and to gaze horizontally from one piece to the next and from one side of the shot to the other. Finally the focal point draws the spectator into the center of these images.
By applying a metonymical approach to his deconstruction and reconstruction of cinema: the artist tackles the content and the container and questions the making of myths and the collective American imagination.
His sculptures Chant 23 (la course de chars) and Sandbagwal both interweave viewpoints and shift through concentric circles. Chant 23 (la course de chars) is governed by the actions described in a passage from Homer’s Iliad. 70mm fi . 70mm fi lm (a horizontal-scroll cinematographic technique) was lm (a horizontal-scroll cinematographic technique) was chosen as medium for this ancient text. This fi lm is not meant to be projected. If it was, it would only result in a white horizontal line that sparkles for a few seconds. The idea is rather to send the spectator spinning, literally turning in circles like a chariot in a coliseum. Through a sort of mutual accord, the text has become indistinguishable from the fi lm and together they generate their own form: an Archimedean spiral where the grooves have very slight infl ection points at regular intervals which allow for the coiled text in its totality to remain visible.
Inside the Letter (the Clue) (2008) acts as a counterbalance: the spectator must travel through a maze of walls on which Edgar Poe’s The Purloined Letter is scribbled. Here the spectator may onl is scribbled. Here the spectator may only grasp the piece by walking around the text. y grasp the piece by walking around the text.
The third sculpture and the installation in situ Sandbagwal was erected with the impartiality of an anasty was erected with the impartiality of an anastylosis or a military fortifi cation. Audebert losis or a military fortification. Audebert chose to reproduce on a large scale a section of the famous Ishtar Gate ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar II for the inner city of Babylon – and in a totally incongruous material. Irony motivates the artist: this archeological site is in present-day Iraq and has been engulfed by the American military base «Camp Alpha.» In 2007, an article in the newspaper Le Monde (2) disclosed that the military may have fi disclosed that the military may have fi lled sandbags with dirt from this site, lled sandbags with dirt from this site, which is potentially an archeological gold mine. Therefore Audebert interlinks knowledge and fi ction: the ruins of Babylon are potentially shattered in bags grouped together to reconstruct the pattern of a walking lion .
Caroline Soyez-Petithomme, translation Ellen Le Blond-Schrader
1. The Searchers, by John F , by John Ford, 1956 ord, 1956
2. «Quand Babylone s’appelait Camp Alpha,» in Le Monde, August 16, 2007