Julien Bismuth
17 May - 15 Jun 2013
© Julien Bismuth
I cannot see what I do not want to know, 2013
Silkscreen panel
View of the exhibition "Perroquet" // Julien Bismuth
17.05.2013 — 15.06.2013
Courtesy Galerie GP&N Vallois, Paris
Photo : Aurélien Mole
I cannot see what I do not want to know, 2013
Silkscreen panel
View of the exhibition "Perroquet" // Julien Bismuth
17.05.2013 — 15.06.2013
Courtesy Galerie GP&N Vallois, Paris
Photo : Aurélien Mole
JULIEN BISMUTH
Perroquet
17 May - 15 June 2013
O you parrot, well-named Parrot, bird whose song is as beautiful as its plumage, and whose dexterity can only be measured against its ability to use speech. [Squawk, screech screech!] At first producing only sounds, then onomatopoeia, it becomes a mirror of its environment after observing, listening and understanding. O you parrot, well-named Parrot, you mimic, you break hierarchies, and you unfold the real to a point where its chronology and apparent order are blurred. [Squawk, screech screech!]
Derision and humour, and also wait, emptiness, error and wandering are at the heart of numerous artistic projects by Julien Bismuth. Comedy of situation and repetition are intertwined with the absurdity of human condition. Bismuth waits, Bismuth falls. He has already collaborated with a donkey (for the performance A script or sequence, 1999), two goats (for the installation-performance Untitled (Hosts), 1998) and with a few members of his own kind, may they be artists, actors, clowns or ventriloquists. Language – made of litotes, of “Ah ha Oh ho” [Ah ha Oh ho Ah ha Oh ho!], of constrained gestures and exacerbated emotions – seems to be the most theatrical character of the company.
The parrot [parrot!] is nowhere to be found in the exhibition and therefore becomes a metaphor, a symbol for the repetition of images in space, and also an image itself of the indistinguishable impression of a subject or an object on top of one another. Julien Bismuth collects images that he finds on flee markets or in the papers, which he then reframes, modifies and silkscreen prints on the walls of the gallery. A photography of a ballerina practicing can hardly be distinguished from the white matter affixed around her, like fog wrapped around her gesture and harmonising her movement. Two men are talking, sat at a table; a young woman stands next to them in a halo of blinding light blurring our reading of the image as much as it enriches it with an enigmatic dimension. The surface fades away and the figures disappear. The ephemeral nature of the image is magnified.
The dissociation of text and image, the tenuous bond between presentation and representation, represented and representing, form the two sides [sides!] of the same coin [coin!], the production of image. The movements of bodies and objects in the space left open in thoughts and on paper or video, multiply and unfold in the exhibition. Watch over your shadow [shhhh], Julien Bismuth could well be trying to steal it.
Marie Frampier
Perroquet
17 May - 15 June 2013
O you parrot, well-named Parrot, bird whose song is as beautiful as its plumage, and whose dexterity can only be measured against its ability to use speech. [Squawk, screech screech!] At first producing only sounds, then onomatopoeia, it becomes a mirror of its environment after observing, listening and understanding. O you parrot, well-named Parrot, you mimic, you break hierarchies, and you unfold the real to a point where its chronology and apparent order are blurred. [Squawk, screech screech!]
Derision and humour, and also wait, emptiness, error and wandering are at the heart of numerous artistic projects by Julien Bismuth. Comedy of situation and repetition are intertwined with the absurdity of human condition. Bismuth waits, Bismuth falls. He has already collaborated with a donkey (for the performance A script or sequence, 1999), two goats (for the installation-performance Untitled (Hosts), 1998) and with a few members of his own kind, may they be artists, actors, clowns or ventriloquists. Language – made of litotes, of “Ah ha Oh ho” [Ah ha Oh ho Ah ha Oh ho!], of constrained gestures and exacerbated emotions – seems to be the most theatrical character of the company.
The parrot [parrot!] is nowhere to be found in the exhibition and therefore becomes a metaphor, a symbol for the repetition of images in space, and also an image itself of the indistinguishable impression of a subject or an object on top of one another. Julien Bismuth collects images that he finds on flee markets or in the papers, which he then reframes, modifies and silkscreen prints on the walls of the gallery. A photography of a ballerina practicing can hardly be distinguished from the white matter affixed around her, like fog wrapped around her gesture and harmonising her movement. Two men are talking, sat at a table; a young woman stands next to them in a halo of blinding light blurring our reading of the image as much as it enriches it with an enigmatic dimension. The surface fades away and the figures disappear. The ephemeral nature of the image is magnified.
The dissociation of text and image, the tenuous bond between presentation and representation, represented and representing, form the two sides [sides!] of the same coin [coin!], the production of image. The movements of bodies and objects in the space left open in thoughts and on paper or video, multiply and unfold in the exhibition. Watch over your shadow [shhhh], Julien Bismuth could well be trying to steal it.
Marie Frampier