Denis Brun, Sydney Houillier, Stéphanie Majoral, Florent Mattei, Lionel Scoccimaro, Nano Valdès
Collective show with Denis Brun, Sydney Houillier, Stéphanie Majoral, Florent Mattei, Lionel Scoccimaro and Nano Valdès
October 22 - November 13, 1999
Galerie de la Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille
ASTÉRIDES presents an exhibition of young resident artists from the studios. This recurring formula, in line with the association’s programming logic, is based on its desire to make public certain works produced over periods ranging from three to six months, in the confidentiality of the studios. Thus, the exhibition brings together works more resulting from a shared working logic among the resident artists at ASTÉRIDES (studio work, exchanges…) than from a common theme, even if there may exist shared concerns between the artists’ approaches and works.
Denis BRUN continues his exploration of self-portraiture through photographic compositions and “Soft Paintings.” The materials constituting the latter are generally traces bearing connections to places, people, ideas, fixed to one another by strips of transparent tape that cover them. His photographic assemblages reveal the same intimate charge. Through pieces that could resemble immense fragmented identity cards, the artist presents himself with humor and sincerity.
Sydney HOUILLIER practices drawing without restraint. His graphics provoke intrigue and questions due to their sometimes hard-to-identify, odd, or deliberately clumsy forms (“logos”). They are produced on various media (T-shirts, keychains, photocopies…), chosen for their capacity to reintroduce the public sphere. The artist approaches the notion of decoration to discuss the value of the work. The object conveying the work would also determine its value, its propensity to be an exchange value both commercially and in terms of social interactions.
Florent MATTEI invests the field of photography to offer a critical view of his immediate environment (advertising, daily life, new food habits…). Mixing advertising stereotypes and everyday details, the shots from the “Uncontrollables” tend to deconstruct the machinery of codes and principles that govern professions manufacturing dreams. The “Biotoniques” series reveals the image’s ability to create falsehood. Foods, from afar perfectly suitable for consumption, reveal up close the existence of a deception.
The work of Stéphanie MAJORAL comes from a confrontation with photography, which she considers not as a means of transforming reality but rather as a delayed projection of it. By integrating the photographic development process into the image’s constitution, Stéphanie MAJORAL seeks its immateriality. The latent image will become tangible according to the spectator’s gaze, through the intimate relationship he is likely to establish with the work.
In a logic of engaging with the classicism of art, Lionel SCOCCIMARO reinvests sculpture by building edifices out of trivial pieces of sugar. The “Architectures of happiness” are as many volumetric sketches that anticipate the unlimited development of a complex architecture. Unlike a classical sculpture seeking permanence, this one would be ephemeral as it is destined to be destroyed at the end of each exhibition period in order to better appreciate the next opportunities to “practice sculpture as a construction game.”
Through an action-based approach—the creation process is often long and laborious—Nano VALDÉS seeks an outcome of his work that belongs to the realm of minimalism.
The final work is often short-lived, likely to disappear quickly, as the artist inscribes it in the cycle of life, the eternal recommencement of things and events. He presents here a moving sculpture whose integrity is strongly linked to the physical notion of precarious balance.
Nano VALDÉS is hosted at ASTÉRIDES within the framework of exchanges set up since December 1998 between three associations managing artist studios: le HANGAR in Barcelona, ASTÉRIDES, and TRIANGLE in Marseille.