Julien Audebert
Périodes
23 Apr - 21 May 2016
JULIEN AUDEBERT
Périodes
23 April - 21 May 2016
As implied by its title, Julien Audebert’s new exhibition at Art : Concept will focus on periodicity on all levels: historical, political or scientific. Through different supports – photography, digital processing and a film – the artist pursues his work on image and perception, striving to materialize our visions and representations on mankind and its relation to history and to the world.
Best known for his “photo-démontages” of the seventh art’s masterpieces such as Soy Cuba, the Battleship Potemkine or La Règle du jeu, to quote but a few, Julien Audebert draws from cinema as from a collective bank of images. Here, for Danse Américaine (2015) the artist has chosen An American in Paris (1951), an American musical comedy by Vincente Minelli released in the aftermath of French Liberation. Using a digital process to blend screen shots, Julien Audebert reassembles in a single panoramic view three parts of the film that remain identifiable through the captions of the matching songs. Only the hero is absent, but his presence is implied by the written fragments of the songs that he interprets as well as by the presence of his dancing partners (the florist, the barmaid, the children, etc.). The artist literally captures thousands of images that he reassembles to recreate a fictional space-and-time continuity in which the spectator seems to recognize a real scene from a film he knows. However, a closer look of the piece reveals a certain amount of asserted artificiality, which is even more revealing here if we remember that An American in Paris was mainly filmed in a studio. The subtlety of this critique resides in its underlying subject; American soft power, a process of cultural domination initiated with the Marshall Plan that found its best ally in cinema.
Subject to the same technical process, Sommet (2015) is even more of a political work: Using the official video of Nato’s 24th Summit, the artist subverts the protocol order with a picture representing all heads of states from behind, facing the golf course that will serve as their military demonstration site. Beyond the literal reversal of the scene, Julien Audebert shifts our perspective to another angle of the diplomatic world, an unusual “behind the scenes” facet of public decorum, denouncing a certain type of image-use. To achieve this, nothing better than making use of manipulative processes.
Whether dealing with cinema or photojournalism, History is the main subject of Julien Audebert’s work. He splits it into periods, segmenting its course to retain only its key moments or conflagrations. His proposals very often are materializations of a point of tension (or a climax to use the language of cinema) of a political or military nature, in which geographical characteristics play a special role. We can recall his reconstruction of the gestation period of the conflict between Russia and the Western world (EstOuest, 2012). In this exhibition, the artist comes back to another conflagration, that of the famous Battle of Verdun. Shot at night, with the help of electric torches, his photographs of ancient military-sites (Nocturnes, 2015-2016) are the result of a lighting process (in the literal sense) of the bumps and unevenness of the battlefield-ground and of the eco-systems that have progressively developed in the holes left by the bombs’ impacts. By means of an almost topographic presentation, Julien Audebert offers a material testimonial of traces of our collective history.
On another level, but always within the symbolism of war, a spatial choreography terminates the exhibition. After being fed with cinema during his whole career, the artist goes behind the camera with his film Mars & Vénus, phases d’opposition (2016)*. Mars, embodied by the filming camera, and Venus, interpreted by a dancer, retranscribe on a human scale the respective revolving periods of the two planets. The spectator’s eye becomes one with the eye of Mars and partakes the visual hunting of Venus, who carries out a visible loop (an astronomic phenomenon called “opposition surge” when Venus reaches the alignment point with the center of her mythological lover). Once again, the underlying subject is the revelation of something by means of images and appearances. Confronted to the implacable character of astrophysical data, the dancing body discloses possibilities and injects humanity into the world of spheres. In a poetic way, the artist thus gives body to an astronomic phenomenon that normally is out of the common mortal’s reach. He does this by making use of the body of a dancer, who also happens to be a star ballerina. Julia Mossé // translation Frieda Schumann
Julia Mossé // translation Frieda Schumann
* A film realized with the participation of the Centre national des arts plastiques and produced by ARTER-VIVANTO 2016 in a partnership with the IMCEE-Observatoire de Paris. Performance: Alice Renavand, Prima Ballerina of the Opéra national de Paris.
Périodes
23 April - 21 May 2016
As implied by its title, Julien Audebert’s new exhibition at Art : Concept will focus on periodicity on all levels: historical, political or scientific. Through different supports – photography, digital processing and a film – the artist pursues his work on image and perception, striving to materialize our visions and representations on mankind and its relation to history and to the world.
Best known for his “photo-démontages” of the seventh art’s masterpieces such as Soy Cuba, the Battleship Potemkine or La Règle du jeu, to quote but a few, Julien Audebert draws from cinema as from a collective bank of images. Here, for Danse Américaine (2015) the artist has chosen An American in Paris (1951), an American musical comedy by Vincente Minelli released in the aftermath of French Liberation. Using a digital process to blend screen shots, Julien Audebert reassembles in a single panoramic view three parts of the film that remain identifiable through the captions of the matching songs. Only the hero is absent, but his presence is implied by the written fragments of the songs that he interprets as well as by the presence of his dancing partners (the florist, the barmaid, the children, etc.). The artist literally captures thousands of images that he reassembles to recreate a fictional space-and-time continuity in which the spectator seems to recognize a real scene from a film he knows. However, a closer look of the piece reveals a certain amount of asserted artificiality, which is even more revealing here if we remember that An American in Paris was mainly filmed in a studio. The subtlety of this critique resides in its underlying subject; American soft power, a process of cultural domination initiated with the Marshall Plan that found its best ally in cinema.
Subject to the same technical process, Sommet (2015) is even more of a political work: Using the official video of Nato’s 24th Summit, the artist subverts the protocol order with a picture representing all heads of states from behind, facing the golf course that will serve as their military demonstration site. Beyond the literal reversal of the scene, Julien Audebert shifts our perspective to another angle of the diplomatic world, an unusual “behind the scenes” facet of public decorum, denouncing a certain type of image-use. To achieve this, nothing better than making use of manipulative processes.
Whether dealing with cinema or photojournalism, History is the main subject of Julien Audebert’s work. He splits it into periods, segmenting its course to retain only its key moments or conflagrations. His proposals very often are materializations of a point of tension (or a climax to use the language of cinema) of a political or military nature, in which geographical characteristics play a special role. We can recall his reconstruction of the gestation period of the conflict between Russia and the Western world (EstOuest, 2012). In this exhibition, the artist comes back to another conflagration, that of the famous Battle of Verdun. Shot at night, with the help of electric torches, his photographs of ancient military-sites (Nocturnes, 2015-2016) are the result of a lighting process (in the literal sense) of the bumps and unevenness of the battlefield-ground and of the eco-systems that have progressively developed in the holes left by the bombs’ impacts. By means of an almost topographic presentation, Julien Audebert offers a material testimonial of traces of our collective history.
On another level, but always within the symbolism of war, a spatial choreography terminates the exhibition. After being fed with cinema during his whole career, the artist goes behind the camera with his film Mars & Vénus, phases d’opposition (2016)*. Mars, embodied by the filming camera, and Venus, interpreted by a dancer, retranscribe on a human scale the respective revolving periods of the two planets. The spectator’s eye becomes one with the eye of Mars and partakes the visual hunting of Venus, who carries out a visible loop (an astronomic phenomenon called “opposition surge” when Venus reaches the alignment point with the center of her mythological lover). Once again, the underlying subject is the revelation of something by means of images and appearances. Confronted to the implacable character of astrophysical data, the dancing body discloses possibilities and injects humanity into the world of spheres. In a poetic way, the artist thus gives body to an astronomic phenomenon that normally is out of the common mortal’s reach. He does this by making use of the body of a dancer, who also happens to be a star ballerina. Julia Mossé // translation Frieda Schumann
Julia Mossé // translation Frieda Schumann
* A film realized with the participation of the Centre national des arts plastiques and produced by ARTER-VIVANTO 2016 in a partnership with the IMCEE-Observatoire de Paris. Performance: Alice Renavand, Prima Ballerina of the Opéra national de Paris.