Exhibition

January 8 - 29, 2000
Galerie de la Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille

For what may be its last exhibition at the Galerie de la Friche, and while waiting to find another venue in Marseille, ASTERIDES has chosen to bring together four young artists — FRANCK ASLAN, MARC ETIENNE, PIERRE MALPHETTES, ELODIE MOIRENC — living and working in Marseille and who have not yet had the opportunity to exhibit there. In addition, DENIS BRUN, who recently took part in an exhibition at the gallery, will present his most recent video.

For this exhibition, ASTERIDES has chosen to present a small number of artists. By selecting several works by each, we hope to encourage a more comprehensive view of their work.

In the gallery space, the confrontation of the works with each other will make it possible to highlight points of connection, through shared concerns both in form and in content: systems of representation appealing to the imagination, the exploitation or pursuit of know-how, and the use of a scenic space in which the spectator is very often taken into account.

Through installations of prefabricated objects — bought and placed — as well as made or manipulated objects, ELODIE MOIRENC works lightly to bring festivity into the everyday, animating an environment. In a spirit close to hedonism, which appears in the course of her life as moments of rest and disconnection from a constraining reality, she creates small objects whose profusion tends to reach a human scale, constructing spaces for relaxation to be lived in.

Using source images drawn from the media, MARC ETIENNE produces “experience scenes”. These are installations using objects and stagings from the world of entertainment and performance. They act as systems for revealing unknown talents belonging to a social and cultural reality often ignored — even though it is used — in the world of contemporary art. By bringing to light out-of-the-ordinary situations, the artist addresses the notion of the body in a sociological sense, through both the Anglo-Saxon perspective and that conveyed by Southern Europe.

FRANCK ASLAN paints portraits of dogs. The formats are unusually large for such subjects: his canvases stretched on frames are nearly two meters high. The artist presents this practice as a commitment — a pretext for exploring painting and its limits in a very formal way, in an approach that could be described as “obsessive making”. For the artist, the aim is less to represent the canine species in a sociological or even anthropomorphic manner by making its portrait, than to push a skill to the point of saturation.

Through installations based on common objects — often pre-existing and re-appropriated (carpet, fan, hopscotch, ladder…) — PIERRE MALPHETTES offers us another kind of confrontation with reality. His works call upon a system of representation that begins in the real and continues in the visitor’s imagination. His pieces, which are often physically impractical yet still suggest the idea of movement, require from the viewer an unlimited openness of mind to resolve them. Their process of elaboration puts into practice the importance of freedom of perception in overcoming constraints.

DENIS BRUN’s video is a succession of shots taken from television or cinema. It seems to suggest a narration one can enter and leave to the rhythm of a James Brown classic in a “live” version. The editing of images from highly diverse fields (fauna, flora, historical events) reveals a small film whose genre might be described as “oneiric fiction.”

Text by Nadine Maurice

An edition by Astérides accompanies the exhibition.