Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes
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TOLIA ASTALI & DYLAN PEIRCE<br />
Surface Value, 2012. Installation view. Courtesy of <strong>the</strong> artists. Photography : Achim Kukulies.<br />
<strong>Les</strong> Prairies's artists<br />
Astali & Peirce's architectonic installations mix constructed shapes and signs of <strong>de</strong>struction. Their<br />
arrangements of modular elements echo <strong>the</strong> principle of mo<strong>de</strong>rnist construction. White, partition-like<br />
plates framed in black, often piled one above <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r, are an authoritative statement of <strong>the</strong>ir function as<br />
buil<strong>de</strong>rs. These basic elements are currently used to configure cold settings in black, grey and white with<br />
bureaucratic not to say totalitarian connotations. The two artists also create black and white collages of<br />
found images, which <strong>the</strong>y present on <strong>the</strong>ir partitions. These collages are of meaningful figures and elements,<br />
whose referents, however, are lost in <strong>the</strong> recent and confused past. The connotations are more evocative than<br />
explicit: "We construct <strong>the</strong> cliché that we would have liked to happen upon". Patterns arise from a contorted<br />
sense of time. It is not clear whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong>y are <strong>the</strong> product of memory at work or of memory collapsing.<br />
They become explicit in clear impressions. "The images are like skin that expels fragments towards <strong>the</strong><br />
surface". These fragmentary memory aids evoke <strong>the</strong> old-fashioned, conspiratorial atmosp<strong>here</strong> of <strong>the</strong><br />
communist world. The ambiguous signs lead <strong>the</strong> spectator to <strong>the</strong> threshold of un<strong>de</strong>rstanding only to dash<br />
expectations. In <strong>Les</strong> Prairies, a 'currency serpent' composed of cents of euro coins is also presented. Apart<br />
from <strong>the</strong> explicit economic reference, it too arises from <strong>the</strong> paranoid mysteries of contemporary history.<br />
A. B. tr. J.H.<br />
Tolia Astali was born in 1974 in Tiflis (Georgia), Dylan Peirce was born in 1977 in Paris<br />
(France), <strong>the</strong>y live and work in Berlin (Germany).<br />
Production<br />
<strong>Les</strong> <strong>Ateliers</strong> <strong>de</strong> <strong>Rennes</strong> 2012.<br />
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