François Curlet
31 May - 07 Jul 2007
FRANÇOIS CURLET
31 May - 7 July 2007
The itinerary of his self-imposed exile illustrates his stance, not just in conceptual and analytical terms but also on the frontier of his explorations into non-sense and the unconscious.
As heir both to John Knight and Jef Geys, he brings about a singular fusion between conceptual art, Dadaist survivals, pop imaginery and situationist-type speculations.
Curlet uses a large variety of methods and materials. He draws both on reality and the imagination, borrowing from the domains of the folk tale, television, economic exchanges and communication – contemporary media worlds out of which he conjures up engaging deregulations.
These elements – whether objects, signs, messages, or whatever – are subjected to a variety of displacements and transformations that divert, invert, or even invalidate their own functionalities.
In these manipulations, Curlet does not hold back from using different processes that also produce commutations of sense: discontinuity, hypertrophy and repetitions of motifs, deconstructions ot the visual, effects of incongruous presence, linguistic games and semantic deviations. He works through a magnifying glass, as though to dilate the ordinary to the point of materialising the improbable.
With his talent for distorting cultural codes, Curlet brings out their potential for play, poetry and narration, infusing everything he touches with his caustic humour. He produces visual and cultural telescopings of fictions and realities, and, with fantasy and irreverent laughter, remixes objects and images into a parallel, distinctive UFO-esque world.
31 May - 7 July 2007
The itinerary of his self-imposed exile illustrates his stance, not just in conceptual and analytical terms but also on the frontier of his explorations into non-sense and the unconscious.
As heir both to John Knight and Jef Geys, he brings about a singular fusion between conceptual art, Dadaist survivals, pop imaginery and situationist-type speculations.
Curlet uses a large variety of methods and materials. He draws both on reality and the imagination, borrowing from the domains of the folk tale, television, economic exchanges and communication – contemporary media worlds out of which he conjures up engaging deregulations.
These elements – whether objects, signs, messages, or whatever – are subjected to a variety of displacements and transformations that divert, invert, or even invalidate their own functionalities.
In these manipulations, Curlet does not hold back from using different processes that also produce commutations of sense: discontinuity, hypertrophy and repetitions of motifs, deconstructions ot the visual, effects of incongruous presence, linguistic games and semantic deviations. He works through a magnifying glass, as though to dilate the ordinary to the point of materialising the improbable.
With his talent for distorting cultural codes, Curlet brings out their potential for play, poetry and narration, infusing everything he touches with his caustic humour. He produces visual and cultural telescopings of fictions and realities, and, with fantasy and irreverent laughter, remixes objects and images into a parallel, distinctive UFO-esque world.