Jaillet, Florence

e-artexte

Dossier | The Perishable Papers of Pierre Pilonchéryesse.ca/en/the-perishable-papers-of-pierre-piloncheryThe Perishable Papers of Pierre PilonchéryBy Florence JailletWith its bin tilted backwards, a truck prevails at the centre of a quadrangular metallicstructure. Thousands of sales catalogues similar to those that invade our mailboxes andhomes each day escape from the truck’s container. These fliers rarely command ourattention. In general, the garbage can is their immediate destination, followed by the citydump. Only just printed and shipped out of the manufacturing plant, already theseephemeral documents are almost garbage. Pilonchéry draws his raw materials from thisuninterrupted flux of printed paper. He appropriates this proliferation of images, surfaces,and colours, modifies its contours, and transforms its destination. He pulls even strips fromthese thousands of brochures and weaves them methodically, endlessly, creating immensesurfaces destined to be staged, manipulated, posted up, suspended, and crumpled.In the project titled Les Catalogues Publicitaires (P7), 1999-2001, one of the 3 by 10.8-metrecanevassages (weavings) is suspended to the structure behind the dump truck. For the pileof degraded materials, the weavings’ inclusion in the installation materializes the possibilityof escaping its usual fate through the intervention of “artistic recycling.” By means of cuttingand interlacing the various strips, the original images become fragmented and disappear infavour of a new weft.Following the collagists, Pilonchéry appropriates reality and collects this new, proliferativebrute matter. His promotional apparatus, moreover, brings us to the public space or, morespecifically, to the billboard space: the weavings cover a series of roadside advertisingpanels. Pilonchéry’s approach nonetheless differs from the principle of “anonymous -laceration” adopted by Jacques Villéglé, insofar as the former transforms this substance,manipulates it, and turns it into a module that can be both multiplied to infinity anddisplayed in the public as well as museum spaces.The thousands of tracts printed daily for mass distribution constitute a considerable pool ofmaterials and facts providing information about our era. The displaying of consumerproducts reveals our society’s desires, needs, not to mention its conditioning. By means ofthe portioning and reassembling of fragments as well as the patient entwining of cataloguestrips, the artist rehabilitates and transforms them into a noble substance. Unencumberedby their primary function, the strips of glossy paper make up a mosaic; the sales pitchunravels and gives way to a new language. The catchy pictures become fragmented to forma new body, an infinite surface that captivates the eye without privileging any one image inparticular.1/3Despite the multiplicity of documents processed, and perhaps as a result of the nature ofthese documents, a dominant colour imposes itself: red. It is without a doubt not by chancethat publicity garbage bears its stamp; red is known for its strong visual impact and is thechoice colour of advertising. Furthermore, the artist pits time against the speed of catalogueproduction, its consumption, and its transformation into garbage: the time of fabricationand weaving, as well as the patience required to execute his work.This displacement of values, this underscoring of the speed at which the flux of images andinformation travels in our era of disposable commodities, calls to mind the works of WangDu: his amassing of newspapers, not to mention the attention he devotes to details, afragment, or to a single sheet of crumpled paper elevated to the status of a monumentalsculpture. In displaying refuse, what Du’s installations propose is a highly criticaldenunciation of media society. Pilonchéry’s procedure, however, does not position itself inthat manner. If he employs certain waste products of consumer society, it is to disturb theclear-cut distinctions we maintain between art and life. In an operation of visual recycling,the impoverished and disdained objects that constitute the remainder of daily life ridthemselves of their consumer content and morph into colours, forms, and fragments of awhole.When faced with these weavings, spectators can amuse themselves by finding pieces ofimages in a manner similar to their seeking out a familiar fabric in a patchwork.Nevertheless, the principle of intertwining thousands of strips of paper above all suggestsan effect of unity and submersion. This is particularly the case with Passage (P23), 2000-1,where the spectator is led to trample on catalogue pages strewn across the floor and totraverse a corridor created by two suspended woven panels.The publicitages (advertisings) take on different meanings in function of their exhibitionspaces. In October of 2006, Pilonchéry presented his work, characterised by a “return tosender” or loop effect, in a hypermarket in the suburbs of Lyon. After weaving thousands ofits expired brochures, the artist then displayed the product of his toil in the market’scirculation spaces. Inside one of those modern, consumerist temples, he showcased hisproject in six installations framed as stations where clients were encouraged to pause whileshopping and in which the perishable publicity canvas occupied a central place. In this arenaof intense commercial and visual competition, the works’ intrusion intrigued and distractedthe gaze, offering spectators the chance to cast a fresh glance upon the most banal realityor an object as familiar and trivial as a supermarket catalogue. In the area surrounding themall, moreover, three publicity billboards prolonged the work. With their primary functionsubverted, these scaffolds loaned by a private society were covered with posters evokingthe motif of the publicitages. In contrast, a few months later the surfaces presented in themall were exhibited in a completely different environment: a disused warehouse in Lyon’sConfluence district. The project, titled Quelques Lieux et leurs Moments, involved the2/3collaboration of circus artist Amaury Jacquot. During two weeks in a vast, evolvingconstruction site open to the public, the moving, recycled surfaces were continuouslyplaced, displaced, and manipulated by students.Other bland images, mere remains of contemporary activity, permit Pilonchéry to weave hiswork. In the Visionnages (visionings), television images reworked by computer areentangled and projected onto different surfaces, cloaking the latter like animal hides. If, asthe artist writes, “art can affix itself onto all of the surfaces of life it meets,” then hisprocedure equally shows us that he can integrate, absorb, and recycle all of life’s products,including those counted among the most innocuous and impure. From this flux of worthlessimages that permanently inundates us, from these weak forms, or from these residues ofdaily consumption, the artist creates potential loci: nomadic surfaces capable of opening upnew spaces and making way for a new perceptive regime.These devices are nonetheless bound to the universal cycle of nature. The combined frailtyof his surfaces and the multiple manipulations of his paper canvases increase theirvulnerability to decomposition. This coming into being finds its significance in PierrePilonchéry’s approach, which, rather than seeking to create relics, aims to bring thesefragile, perishable paper surfaces to life in a series of moments and in the many places wefrequent.[Translated from the French by Vivian Ralickas]3/3

Les papiers périssables de Pierre Pilonchéry = The Perishable Papers of Pierre Pilonchéry

https://e-artexte.ca/id/eprint/24914/2/esse.ca-Dossier%20%20The%20Perishable%20Papers%20of%20Pierre%20Pilonche%CC%81ry.pdf

Les papiers périssables de Pierre Pilonchéry = The Perishable Papers of Pierre Pilonchéry

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

e-artexte