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58
Les Prairies's artists
PIERRE LEGUILLON
Prelinger Drawings, 2012. Prelinger Library, San Francisco, 2011.
Courtesy of the artist and galery Motive, Amsterdam.
Pierre Leguillon makes images out of images from his own collection. Prelinger
Drawings is a new installation that combines two different artistic registers:
a rectangular space made from an assemblage of various printed fabrics, chosen
for their patterns, printing techniques and their provenance (Scandinavian, African,
French or Japanese) on the one hand and, along with that, a set of pencil drawings,
frottages of book covers from the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. This private
library, devoted to the history of the United States, was created by Megan and Rick
Prelinger and opened to the public in 2004. It contains a vast quantity of books, both
scientific and non-scientific, a number of which are obsolete, on all kinds of subjects.
It amounts to an encyclopaedic and vernacular storehouse of North American history.
The diversity of the books on all kinds of subjects, whose covers the artist selected,
reflects a pragmatic ideology. The patterns of the fabrics summon up a history of
modern art and design while at the same time suggesting economic globalisation
through the multifarious labels of origin left apparent on the edges of the fabric.
Fabrics and drawings are overlaid to create a palimpsest in which the transparency
of the printed materials is emphasised by the luminosity of the venue. This highly
colourful arrangement is also like a theatre of memory where frottage has something
in common with a ritual gesture – an act of reining in perpetual movement, where
the visual aspect is more important than the text and circulation prevails over
transmission.
A. B. tr. J. H.
Born in 1969 in Nogent-sur-Marne (France), lives and works in Paris (France).
Production
Les Ateliers de Rennes 2012.