Ceysson & Bénétière

 

Everything is converging toward a new energy source. 

The artist is using his time to build ephemeral stabilities. He observes them to detect their strengths and weaknesses and demolish it all. Building and destroying, over and over. Tirelessly, he collects, absorbs, and projects outside of himself to become physically accessible to others. 

The main fuel of this story takes an expressive form, a face that even acts as an authority figure, and which, by dint of theory, isolation, and imperviousness, slowly sets in an unfortunate tendency to marginality. The strangeness of his public discourses, his enthusiastic mode of being, and his originality provoke and unsettle people. Nonetheless, his will remains the only thing that resists his morbid romanticism. His calm and peaceful yet relentless calling brings forward a simple proposal to hang on to the initiative. It is directed to all and everyone. To succeed, all parts are required, small and big ones, beautiful and ugly: cutting off, truncating, sawing, and planning to reveal the essence. To theorize its crystalline forms, its constructions, and mythology is like inhaling before blowing. 

Language becomes a moment. It is spoken the span of an image, a day, or a trip. On a witch’s broom naturally, more commonly in a vehicle, or by foot in the mountain. This is how John Williams convinced me and came with me to “Drop City”, and, ten years later, enabled me to make Les chemins de XPR-R-3N53, the movie featured in the exhibition. A trip in which topics are ranked, placed, given a role, and shed light on is an exhilarating experience. 

Rambling, this expert wanderer becomes a guide for the others, after having been a rookie. 

Between describing a splashy show and representing human idleness, the choice implies hesitation and reflection, to better articulate the junctions between the various interventions. It is the choice of the protagonists echoing it or serving as generic silhouettes, clutches, or Nordic walking sticks to frame the experience. Step by step, here and there, new phenomena emerge, like sounds in a furious orchestra directed toward its emancipation by the Cosmogol fuel. Fall after fall, whole after whole in the ground of our “twisted” planet up to Pieplu’s television to fly away somewhere else. 

Digging into the open world requires conviction. You need to firmly believe in it. In the same way as to pass on the word, you need to emphasize it over and over, heavily, to shout it even. To talk to more receptive minds, you can also create an illusion and simply name the beautiful and magnetic collected objects. When you think about it, magnets attract refractory materials, which opens even more sharing possibilities. No problem, Gibi-Bread, Gibi-Cheese, or Aragon, everybody is invited to enjoy the benefits of this marvelous fuel, the Cosmogol, which creates, surrounds, expands, draws, and speaks. As if to mark its urgency, this compilation aims at mixing instants and actions, like the “Dance Machine” you can listen to in laser discs or concerts, or Skyrim, accessible in streaming and from your sofa. 

In the current French context, we have to make a crucial choice of alternative energy sources to replace the current ones. Rockets have to take off and new ideas have to emerge, making ample room for fragility, difference, and the unreachable, allowing a fertile ground for encounters, new proposals, discoveries as well as surprises. 

Drop City was the first hippie community in America. It was built next to Trinidad, Colorado. It was a mix of acid visions, idealism, and axe-cut car bodies. Hundreds of hitchhikers visited it on their way to the Mecca of Haight-Ashbury in 1967. In less than 10 years, Drop City has become a ghost town… The best tales of this phenomenon are Drop City by Peter Rabbit and an article written by Bill Boyd in Shelter and Society. 

• Gibi, “Gibi Bread” or “Gibi cheese”, the Gibis are the organized, sometimes functional yet sluggish protagonists of The Shadoks world. 
• Cosmogol, which is short for “Cosmogol 99”, is the fuel used for the rocket of the Gibis in The Shadoks. They pump it from the ground via “cosmopumps”. 
• The French comedian Claude Pieplu (1923-2006) is the famous voice that narrated the Shadoks stories as well as many other films between 1944 and 2002. 
• The Shadoks is an animated TV series created by Jacques Rouxel and narrated by Claude Pieplu. 
• Skyrim is an “open-world” action role-playing video game created in 2011. 

 

Artist : Antwan Horfee

---

Visitor Information

Ceysson & Bénétière
23 rue du Renard
75004 Paris

Gallery hours:
Tuesday - Saturday
11am - 7pm
T: + 33 1 42 77 08 22