Chez Valentin gallery presents a solo exhibition of Pierre Ardouvin from January 15th until March 11th. The artist has created an absurd, poetic and ironic landscape, through a body of new artworks.
“Amnesia” can be seen as a walk in a mental landscape, bare and unreal, almost as if it was coming out of a supermarket. The elements that shape this artificial scenery -a stream, a sunset, a bird singing, some flowers, all laid on a black ground like a shroud- create an effect of absurdity, of strong irony that contradicts the sense of a bucolic landscape they first elicit.
The title of the exhibition comes from an artwork formed by seven flower compositions spelling the word “Amnésie” (“Amnesia”). The letters made of artificial flowers are simultaneously reminiscent of flowery balconies and funeral crowns. The stream in which water flows endlessly is made of molded black plastic basins laid on raw wood pedestals, identical to transport crates. The sunset is a truncated disc of orange altuglas with a light fixture directly set on the floor. A screeching bird, like a screaming alarm, is heard sporadically throughout a speaker fixed atop of a wooden pole. A series of large-frame size watercolors spin out this atmosphere into a melancholic reverie...
Pierre Ardouvin also presented an installation entitled “It seems like the South” on the front of the Museum of Modern Art of Paris until January 31, 2006.
Chez Valentin gallery will show a new installation by the artist for the Statements of Art Basel as well.