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Press release (enable
to download on the web site www.frac-bourgogne.org)
The
Peter Downsbrough exhibition that will be on view
at the FRAC Burgundy until 30 November offers a chance not only
to better discover the videos which are still a little known aspect
of the artist’s work, but also to grasp the way they cohere
with the wall pieces, which are the works usually shown in France,
the pieces over city plans, and the books, with the publication
of the book MANY. For, taken as a whole, his research deals with
the construction of space and the way his pieces make it possible
to come up with a re-reading of it, and enhance our understanding
of it. This exhibition will be complemented by the production of
a work in Place Bossuet in Dijon, in the course of 2005, which will
help visitors to gauge the whole wealth of the work of this American
artist, who has been living for several years in Brussels, and made
spacing – which is at once cutting and opening – the
focus of his oeuvre.
The
pieces which revealed Peter Downsbrough’s
work in Europe, in the mid-1970s, formed the Two Poles
and Two Pipes. This involved two wooden or black metal
bars, set inside the exhibition space and in the environment. In
the wake of minimalist sculpture, these site markings showed the
place but, for the artist, they also represented a stance, a position
taken up, which is incidentally the title of his latest catalogue
(POSITION), which was published for his exhibition at the Palais
des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 2003. “My aim is to show that
[...] we shouldn’t take up positions without thinking about
them. You have to make a choice. It’s not haphazard”.
He thus tries to get the viewer to be attentive, and think about
the relations between things.
His line of thinking about the description of space, based on notions
of situation and context, is applied to constructed space as well
as to language. So in 1980, he made the Wall Pieces and
Room Pieces for which he associated lines, rods and tubes
with words. The viewer was thus inside something with which he had
to dialogue, both physically and mentally, among the infinite possibilities
of the interplay of spaces and words. A large number of works express
this rich idea, one such being The Ring (1982-1993), which
belongs to the FRAC Burgundy collection, and is on view here.
This framing of space is obviously extended by the use of photography,
which the artist used initially to document his works. But from
1975 photographs played a major part in his research and brought
out the factors which order the cityscape, and its structure, and
lend it meaning. In the 1970s, film and then video displayed another
of the aspects of space in which Peter Downsbrough
has been interested: time. With ET/C (2004), a film made
for the show, he proposes a journey from one city to another, showing
the importance of urban space, and the way our perception of it
today is heightened by all the movements we make.
Space is thus defined as a sequence of different contexts, and not
as a totally comprehensible reality based on a unique viewpoint.
His projects for public places, initiated in 1990 at Rennes, incorporate
the environment within the space of the work and thus within the
space of the viewer’s reading of it. They accordingly appear
like structures which both show the place and alter it. This is
the project currently under way for the Place Bossuet in Dijon.
We can also (re)discover the two pieces made for the Le Creusot
University Library in 1998. one outside, DE, ET, LA, the
other inside, ENTRETEMPS/ DE, ET, OU.
The book MANY (2004), likewise produced for this show, mixes the
many elements of the artist’s oeuvre in a volume which is
nothing if not dense. Maps, words, lines and images follow on one
from the other at a frantic pace, alerting our vigilance to the
world and dealing with the book’s space like a prism with
countless facets.
Mobility and passage thus lie at the heart of the way Peter
Downsbrough works, as he transposes his reflections from
one place to another, in the form of maquettes and sounds, postcards
and moving images, books and photographs, filling the exhibition
venue and the public place alike. He thus invites us to “look
about us and take an interest in what is there”, turning this
inventory into a possibility. He says as much to Sarah McFadden
during an interview to be published by the FRAC Burgundy in the
catalogue 1:1 x temps - quantités, proportions, et fuites:
“You can’t necessarily change the course of the world
and maybe you don’t want to, but you have to be aware of it.
That way you can start to think: “Well, maybe it is possible
to do things differently” “.
Text : Claire Legrand
Peter
Downsbrough
Born in 1940 in New Brunswick (New Jersey, USA)
Lives and works in New York and Brussels
One-man shows in the last six months of 2004
Galerie Cent8, Paris, 05/06 - 17/08 ; 11/09 - 16/10
Frac Bourgogne, Dijon, 10/09 - 20/11
Production of the DVD with the film ET/C, 2004 (coprod. Import -
mfc/Michèle Didier & Les presses du réel).
Publication of the book MANY and of a catalogue with texts by Michel
Gauthier and Line Herbert-Arnaud ;
Foreword by Eva González-Sancho
Mamco, Genève, Suisse, 16/10 - ...
Group shows, last six months of 2004
“L’intime, le collectionneur derrière la porte”,
La Maison rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris, 05/06 - 26/09
“A angles vifs”, capcMusée d’art contemporain,
Bordeaux (catalogue), 10/06 - 26/09
“Not Done !”, MUKHA, Anvers, Belgique (catalogue), 19/06
- 29/08
“Sites”, Musée du bassin houiller lorrain, Carreau
Wendel, Petite Rosselle, 24/06 - 05/09
“Sight & Sound”, 7ème biennale du son et
de l’image, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Danemark, 10/08
- 01/09
“Metamorph”, Biennale de Venise, 9ème exposition
internationale d’architecture, Venise, Italie (catalogue)
12/09 - 07/11
“La ville qui fait signes”, Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing (DVD
+ catalogue), 01/10 - 06/12
This exhibition was made possible through the support of the Minister
of Culture (DRAC: Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Burgundy),
the
Regional Council of Burgundy and the General Council of the Côte
d’Or.
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