Link to exhibition by WILLIAM HUNT

INTERIOR LABOUR, OVERLAPPING UNDERLAID.

 

LAURE MARVILLE

CHILLIN' LIKE A VILLAIN

May 28 - July 9, 2016

 

 

It is with great pleasure that we announce our first solo exhibition with Laure Marville (*1990, Lausanne) at Rotwand.

 

Am I Possible?

Using Taste as a Playground: Identity as a Position

 

When we use a phrase that a thousand people have already cited and recited, there is little risk of error. That's the recipe for so many commercial successes, from bestsellers to daytime soaps to IKEA paintings. Culture, art or decoration, it's smooth and simple. Digestible and sweet, it slides down the throat or against the leather covering of a sofa. It's pre-chewed, re-chewed and regurgitated. Like a trite, ready-made assortment of identities.

 

Laure Marville is the opposite. And her work is like she is: a fragmented and complex identity whose elements create a f(r)ictional universe that constantly changes its nature with the spectator.

 

According to Nicolas Bourriaud, post-production artists define themselves via a figure of knowledge characterized by the invention of itineraries through culture. By making this path visible, Laure speaks of identity, of its construction and decryption, and also of its affirmation. For when she borrows a motif of Adolf Loos or a title from Jenny Holzer, it's not so much an homage as it is a sort of “hard drive” that reflects her visual and cultural education.

 

From death metal to swiss village traditions, the Lausanne artist navigates an infinite universe of referential signs that are heterogeneous to say the least. Without hierarchy between popular and academic culture, between Dior and Black Sabbath, between Black Sabbath and TSR Crew or Tracy Emin or Tkjeans or English embroidery or feminisms or word play or Coco Chanel or TrueA Detective or academic painting or Judith Butler or board games or Corinna Bille or classical music or ... [...]

A

Laure is inspired by all this, using it and redistributing its elements to us in a patchwork that is closer to punk than hippie :: WHERE IS THE INVISIBLE LINE THAT WE MUST DRAW TO CREATE INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT PATTERNS :: She demands the right to do what she wants, all while staying conscious of the fact that “what she wants” is not neutral.

 

She evaluates convergences of colors, motifs, notions of good and bad taste. But without pushing any solution, without proposing a response, nor a recipe, nor a path to follow. Making the ideas of Adolf Loos her own, Laure is interested in style as something that must, before anything else, be invested with the individual and specific to each. Style must change, age, become transformed along with the individual, be indivisible from the individual, rendering obsolete any questions of fashion, tradition or etiquette, whether we're speaking of clothing style or the hanging of artworks; struggling to create a sort of hybrid between the human and the thing that is created.  According to the Austrian architect, an interior that was truly created by its inhabitant would be impossible to critique in terms of style. :: WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR HOUSE, YOU ARE ALWAYS RIGHT. NO ONE ELSE IS RIGHT ::

 

Laure goes further. She transforms and appropriates for herself this idea in order to form the basis of a system of judgment applicable to diverse domains of lived experience. A personal system that is open, empathetic, modest and intelligent. A system of values that have nothing to do with taste, interest or affinities, but rather with a certain definition of “sincerity” awaited by production. An idea close to Simack :: THE PHILOSOPHY OF JUWAIN PROVIDES THE POSSIBILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE OTHER. IT WILL NOT NECESSARILY MAKE YOU ACCEPT THIS POINT OF VIEW AS TRUE, BUT YOU WILL RECOGNIZE ITS EXISTENCE ::

 

Though she evidently has personal preferences, she considers them to be individual and without absolute value. In this way, all production, as long as she is communicative, will be valuable.

                                                                  intelligent

                                                                  personal

                                                                  substantial

 

In this line of thought, only one thing is unforgivable: duplicity, the “fake.” Whether it be a speech that is voluntarily (or involuntarily) rendered abstruse by a lack of knowledge, writing that uses hackneyed expressions or a work of art that rides the waves of fashion without creating distance: everything that closes in on the expected, on what has already been chewed up and spit out.

 

...Me, I, you, we are there...

 

Eggy, Rotwand: the majority of the titles Laure Marville chooses are invested with a double or triple meaning. It's a reflection of a system that she applies to the ensemble of her work; a history of discrepancies and ambiguities. Her productions, like a series of works on paper, are voluntarily unable or little able to be defined. / multiples.

 

An ambiguity that she seeks and develops on several levels:

 

>  possibilities for use: invitation, appropriation, utilization, ...

>  market status of pieces: impression vs hand gestures, series/multiples vs unique piece, ...

>  nature of the artworks: works on paper, wallpaper, framed, gallery-decor format, painting, ... 

 

To realize this profound ambivalence, it's first necessary to know that the proposition presented here is only one possibility chosen at a given moment for a given space. A sort of freeze frame on an ensemble that is always potentially another… An ephemeral form that defines, in moment X, everything.

 

In Rotwand, the prints are works on paper. In another context, they could become wallpaper or be framed. Properly hung in an interior, they would resemble large-format domestic paintings, but they could also be posted outside as billboard advertisements. This willingness to create a smokescreen has always been there. Like with Beograd im Jaun – a large print on fabric – which after having been mounted on the wall, stretched across a wall painting, found itself nonchalantly tossed onto a railing in the Geneva art space Duplex. Or these pouffes, functional sculptures that the visitors to Villa Bernasconi hesitated to use. As for the plates in the series Solid Quote Pictures, are they too decorative for a contemporary art exhibition?

 

By destabilizing her public's regard of the status of the artwork she presents, Laure touches on the way in which the public acts or interacts with her work. The Lausanne artist forces the visitor and the buyer to enter into real interaction with the work. Because in the end, he who possesses or presents the artwork makes the choices. Each one obliges him to position himself along a panel of possibilities that touch as much upon the art market and its economic and informative diffusion, as they do on the potential social or elitist dimension of contemporary art.

 

The layers – piled up or woven – finish by creating a space within which thought can circulate. Both invitation and communication, a space where the spectator and the artist meet for something other than a drink.

 

...Me I you, you we are there...

 

EGGY, LILIES, INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT PATTERNS, LE CHEVAL ROSE ET BLÊME, WOOD, COMPOSITION A, ROTWAND, DOLCE VITA, WARUM EIN MANN GUT ANGEZOGEN SEIN SOLL, SERGE POURPRE, YOAN'S FAV, BILINSKY, RADICALIS: RELATIF À LA RACINE, MÉDUSES, STILL NOT BLACK ENOUGH, STILL NOT BLACK ENOUGH, ABSINTHE, LAST NIGHT, LA MER DE GLACE, LA CRUCHE CASSÉE, ORION NOIR, LA PRISONNIÈRE, SOLID QUOTES, FORÊTS OBSCURES, SEVERAL LAZY POSSIBILITIES, STYLE REMAINS, QUOTE THE NAME, YOU KNOW IT'S NOT YOURS, MAVALA, THIRTEEN , DRESSED 1, DRESSED 2, STRIPPED, SAME FANZINE, STILL NOT BLACK ENOUGH, A FOR ANYTHING / THE PEOPLE MAKER, TOUT ET N'IMPORTE QUOI, LILIES, INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT PATTERNS, LAST NIGHT, ARTIST TO CONSIDER, LE CHEVAL PÂLE, BETTER THAN A HEAVY METTAL POSTER, CREATING MY HOME WITH STYLE, SOMETHING RELATED TO OP ART, A MOMENT OF CLARITY, HELL AWAITS, AN EVENING AT JAUN, JAGONA, BANG BANG JAGONA, CLUB, BEOGRAD IM JAUN.

 

Text Roxane Bovet (translation Kate McHugh Stevenson)