More is not enough

Work : More is not enough

Modest Bling-Bling installation

Location : Z.A.N Gallery and CRAC LRMP.

The Z.A.N Gallery is a place/project by Florent Lamouroux, France, 2015.

Statement :

Montpellier, March 11, 2016.

Art and money.
To prepare for my personal exhibition at the Z.A.N gallery, I admit that I did not think of the fake check drawn in 1919 by Marcel Duchamp to pay the dentist Tzanck, or at most of the little mouse who slips a coin under the children’s pillow at night toothless.
The Zones of immaterial pictorial sensitivity sold by Yves Klein in 1959 for a certain weight of gold did not cross my mind either, even if I intended to use this precious material in my turn. I add for good measure that the more recent works of Miguel Angel Rojas or Luz Forero have not come to mind, not to mention the philosophy of the respectable Georg Simmel…
No, to be completely sincere, the cornerstone, if not philosophical, that supports the conceptual edifice of this project is my critical reading of the important passages from the Mickey Parade magazine where Uncle Scrooge dives with delight into the sea of coins piled up in his safe. very gigantic.
If you think about it, the art market today is made up of an infinity of small globalized branches, small white cubes which can very well also be seen as large piggy banks into which multimillionaires pour their excess money. cash.
Moreover, in English, piggy bank is called Piggy money. I once wanted to title the exhibition like this, but I was too afraid of insulting the reputation of this peaceful animal as the deadly pleonexia of some people today exceeds the limits of common decency. More is not enough, such is usually the line of conduct of these Midas who ignore themselves to the point of forgetting the essentials. One day, too late, they will realize, like the mythological king, that gold does not feed its man. This is how the world goes – towards its hunger – while they pile up in their giant piggy banks expensive and grandiloquent objects of speculation which confirm every day that finance can very well take the forms of art, and that it cannot There is nothing like vice that can pass for virtue.
In November 2013, the daily newspaper USA Today dared to issue this provocative headline: “Has art become a criminal enterprise? How the laundering of dirty money makes the market reach stratospheric prices.”
Some informed observers then imagined that the greatest crime of art was to have killed itself in this financial overdose of dubious provenance.
I do not agree. Art is not this great upside-down corpse rotting in its flashy tinsel. Today as yesterday, dear Marcel, he is of a vigorous simplicity laid bare. And there is nothing more ambitious, more difficult than keeping things simple. Sometimes you just need to look at things from another angle. More is not enough, because being too pretentious, too vulgar, too blingbling is ultimately not enough.
Stay on a small scale, produce works worthy of interest with three pieces of string, have the courage to self-deprecate, survive by staying away from the market, think a little before acting.
This is ultimately what I was thinking about when I visited the Z.A.N Gallery.

 

Links :

Les échos 1

Le nouvel observateur

Les échos 2

Le figaro

USA Today

Marianne



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