« Something to think about "," to make laugh " and " to dream"r": these are the three goals that Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoît Mangin have set for themselves, having been together since 1991 in the explosive duo Art Orienté Objet. A dynamic and deliberately provocative duo, committed to biodiversity and ecology ", having made humor and caustic wit their main weapons. Using hybridization and incongruity – a " complex aesthetics "at the same time" both endearing and repulsive, exciting and unsettling " playing " the role of the heartthrob "—, they have put their art at the service of the animal and plant cause. After the Domaine de Chamarande, they invite us to the Les Filles du Calvaire gallery for " awaken our consciences and ask our living conditions ».
DIORAMAS
Intended to raise awareness of the dangers of antibiotics, their Giant Microbiotic Landscapes (2016) reveal their inner workings on a grand scale! At the crossroads of art and science, like much of their research blending fiction and biotechnology, these intestinal landscapes, dramatized by their enlargement and the fluorescence of rare stones, sponges, and algae used to mimic the microscopic forms of colonizing bacteria, leave us bewildered. Mixing strangeness, beauty, and triviality, they provoke both fascination and repulsion. Like Alexander Fleming, the physician and biologist who authored " germ paintings "(germ paintings) and Wassily Kandinsky, who, ill, became passionate about macrophotography of cells and tissues, here we are fascinated by our threatened interiors, a few millimeters
of intestines evoking some fabulous seabed…
HYBRIDIZATIONS
More disruptive, Hydra post-humana (2021), skeleton of a fantastic three-headed animal emerging from a " a post-human future marked by ecological catastrophe "It showcases all the macabre fantasy of the duo, who regularly invent fabulous creatures resulting from the crossbreeding of different species. For example, the centaur skeleton cobbled together following a shamanic experience among the Babongo pygmies of Gabon, during which each person saw themselves as an animal (I saw myself, I was a centaur; I saw myself, I was a giraffe). Adherents of slow art, whose manifesto they wrote in 1992, the two troublemakers use only..." recycled, renewable and/or sustainable materials that are not very harmful to the environment and develop artisanal techniques. Avoiding the use of plastic or 3D printers so commonly used in contemporary art, they collect all sorts of bones and animal remains in forests, along roadsides, or by lakes—remains that have given birth
in 2000 to a poignant " coat of crushed animals ", the Roadkill Coat. A horrifying image echoing their grim landscape of deforestation (Resilience, 2009).
"OBJECT-ORIENTED ART | I'M AGAINST IT!"
THE DAUGHTERS OF CALVARY – 21, RUE CHAPON, PARIS 3RD
FROM SEPTEMBER 1ST TO 23RD, 2023
FILLESDUCALVAIRE.COM
