Aurélien Froment
Invited by Pascale Cassagnau
03 Sep - 07 Oct 2010
Aurélien Froment
Pulmo Marina, 2010
HDCAM transferred to Flash Video, colour, sound, 5:10 min
Courtesy of Aurélien Froment and Motive Gallery, Amsterdam
Commissioned by Independent Cinema Office und Lux, UK with support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England
Pulmo Marina, 2010
HDCAM transferred to Flash Video, colour, sound, 5:10 min
Courtesy of Aurélien Froment and Motive Gallery, Amsterdam
Commissioned by Independent Cinema Office und Lux, UK with support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England
PULMO MARINA (2010)
Aurélien Froment’s (*1976 in Angers, lives and works in Dublin) work includes videos and performances alongside texts, photographs and collages. His works can be located spatially and metaphorically between pocket theatre and projection space. These concern the conditions of reception, pictorial montage and time and time again explore the boundaries between fiction and documentation. In this way, medial threshold situations arise, where the viewer-reader becomes aware of their own modalities in perceiving a work of art.
In his works, the artist prefers to reach back for certain narrative techniques, like describing and analysing pictures, using the narrative device, “mise en abyme”, and citing iconographic elements. In addition, the artist often adopts already existing media, like textbooks, readers’ guides or illustrated volumes, yet he changes their purpose to the degree that he replaces the severe structure with a wandering narrative. The work of Aurélien Froment and Rodney Graham coincide in one respect: allegory. As with Graham, Froment’s works invoke phantoms or, to put it another way, they coalesce into unities of absence. This also happens in the video work, “Pulmo Marina”, where the speech-act appears as a discursive element in the form of a speech intended to shape a fiction: accordingly, during the five-minute film a voiceover informs us about the biological characteristics of jellyfish, so that our cognitive processes are led astray.
Text: Pascale Cassagnau
Aurélien Froment’s (*1976 in Angers, lives and works in Dublin) work includes videos and performances alongside texts, photographs and collages. His works can be located spatially and metaphorically between pocket theatre and projection space. These concern the conditions of reception, pictorial montage and time and time again explore the boundaries between fiction and documentation. In this way, medial threshold situations arise, where the viewer-reader becomes aware of their own modalities in perceiving a work of art.
In his works, the artist prefers to reach back for certain narrative techniques, like describing and analysing pictures, using the narrative device, “mise en abyme”, and citing iconographic elements. In addition, the artist often adopts already existing media, like textbooks, readers’ guides or illustrated volumes, yet he changes their purpose to the degree that he replaces the severe structure with a wandering narrative. The work of Aurélien Froment and Rodney Graham coincide in one respect: allegory. As with Graham, Froment’s works invoke phantoms or, to put it another way, they coalesce into unities of absence. This also happens in the video work, “Pulmo Marina”, where the speech-act appears as a discursive element in the form of a speech intended to shape a fiction: accordingly, during the five-minute film a voiceover informs us about the biological characteristics of jellyfish, so that our cognitive processes are led astray.
Text: Pascale Cassagnau