20 February 2015 -
10 May 2015
This double decor, composed of works by Eléonore False and Ana Vega in dialogue with one another, forms a series of illusionist scenes and landscapes within the Hôtel de Gallifet. Their material and volumetric treatment of the image (through collage, retouching, repetition, enlargement) permits us to view it from a new perspective, between photograph and object, moving design and bodily gesture.
For the first time, the Double Décor exhibition brings together a selection of works by Eléonore False and Ana Vega, combining the plurality of their expressive modes. From photography to collage, sculpture to video, ceramics to installations, these collectively-arranged pieces within the Hôtel de Gallifet form a series of illusionist scenes and landscapes.
The overall system offers a pathway to tricks of perspective and aims to establish a dialogue with its environment. This heritage setting offers an architectural space and a specific decor that perfectly matches two essential principles that guide the artists’ thinking: the idea of duplication and the question of design.
Their works, connected and contrasted according to a network of affinities and exchanges, duplicate in some ways the original decor of the site, establishing reference points to the tapestries and other decorative elements that adorned it in the past. At the same time, the many references to the body, to movement and to dance which shape their work reinforce the choreographic element of the exhibition.
This double-voiced reflection on the materiality and formation of the image employs different processes of editing and photo manipulation - moving from 2D to 3D, using both the walls and the floors, conveying reflections and movements, fragmenting, cutting, folding and superimposing, and varying the scales, surfaces and colours. The aim is to highlight Fale and Vega’s shared interrogation of the volumetric potentialities of the image, a phenomenon that is capturing the imaginations of a growing number of artists of their generation.
Several convergences of the artists’ respective approaches arise from this assemblage of pieces, in particular their common appropriation of designs and images which are subsequently reprocessed and enlarged, or merged with other elements. While False draws from an expansive repertoire of iconographic sources, some of them classical, which she reworks manually through playing with the contrast between the levels of black and white, Vega turns to the brightly-coloured codes of the advertising industry to personify everyday objects using digital tools. Both succeed in establishing, through the use of their own aesthetic vocabulary, the same singular tension between visual seduction and the gaze’s blurred perception.
This joint exhibition ultimately provides an opportunity to measure the evolution and continuity of their careers since their parallel training, with both initially studying applied textile arts before subsequently attending fine art school. This double education has influenced their shared interest in the multiple dimensions of decor and its interrelationships with the fields of painting, decorative arts, theatre and cinema.
Commissioner : Alexandre Quoi
