Claire Fontaine
I – WE – YES
07.15.20 – 09.15.20
Claire Fontaine
I – WE – YES
07.15.20 – 09.15.20
studioconcreto presents I – We – Yes, the solo show of the artist collective Claire Fontaine, created in 2004 in Paris, based in Palermo since three years. The silkscreens, inspired by posters made in 1968 in the occupied Academy of Fine Arts of Paris, are reproductions of the historical images on newsprint modified to address the present. Our tools of communication and propaganda are similar to the ones of the time but more pervasive. In the silkscreen entitled I – We – Yes, that gives the title to the exhibition, the artist associates to the image lifted from the poster “La parole est à vous” the default text which can be seen on the screen of the phone before typing an sms in English. Generic, absurd and positive, the triad of words ‘I-We-Yes’ is the result of a program of artificial intelligence that suggests elements for creating a sentence, thereby predicting the formation of thinking. The device’s memory gets more refined through the direct learning of the user’s everyday lexicon, it remembers words, opinions, locations and habits. The other posters reveal an invasive presence of brands and logos, floating over our bodies and inside our heads, both in the public and private, physical and virtual spaces, where nothing can escape control and the translation of our lives into ‘data’.
The newsprint, fragile and undervalued (especially in our time where most reading is done online) is both the paper on which were printed Claire Fontaine’s silkscreens I-We-Yes, On vous intoxique and Retour à la normale, and what covers the floor of the exhibition space. Newsfloor (Il Manifesto) is an artwork in which the artist pastes on the floor recent copies of a daily newspaper, in order to destroy the neutrality of the space and to force the artwork to coexist with the ‘visual noise’ of the newspapers’ pages. Photos, articles, advertisement and drawings establish an unexpected dialogue with the artworks on display that transforms our perception of them.
Passepartout Palermo (2020) is a sculpture that questions the use value of artworks and the inviolability of private property. The blades that compose it can open by lockpicking any door and they are a metaphor of the possibility to penetrate spaces that we are excluded from. The key rings refer to places where doors have been opened by the artists, in this case to the city where they live.
To inaugurate the exhibition, a performative lecture by the artist will examine the claim about the political value of the bodies’ coexistence, which cannot be replaced by normalising physical interactions through indirect communication. The connection between experience and representation, strike and work will be collectively explored and discussed.
With this lecture, Claire Fontaine will inaugurate the series “Performance di parola tra gesto e architettura” [Word performances between gesture and architecture] that aims at reconsidering the interpersonal space of the street – despite the obstacles and the symptomatic crisis of presence – bringing it back to the centre of the debate. “Performance di parola tra gesto e architettura” [Word performances between gesture and architecture] is one of the winning projects of the 2nd edition of Creative Living Lab (2019), award conceived by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture – an organism of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and funded as part of the extraordinary 2020 program in the field of culture and entertainment of the Puglia Region.