The subject

Summer Residency Restitution, 8th September, Lieu Commun, Toulouse

2011-09-01T19:38:00.000+01:00

Résidence d’été à Lieu-Commun_
du 13/07 au 08/09/2011

Avec_
Chad KEVENY, Marie MOREL,
Nicolas ROBILLIART et Julien TARDIEU.

Restitution de la résidence_
le jeudi 8 septembre à 19h

L’été l’artiste ère dans les rues toulousaines encombrées de touristes à la recherche d’un espace pour travailler, mais il y en a si peu. Heureusement au coeur du quartier Bonnefoy, quelques centaines de mètres carrés arrachés à la cupidité des promoteurs sont loués par une association qui agit pour la promotion de l’art contemporain, des artistes et des publics. C’est à Lieu-Commun, le bien nommé, que travaillent durant tout l’été : Marie Morel, Nicolas Robilliart, Julien Tardieu et Chad Keveny. Rencontre avec les artistes et restitution de la résidence le jeudi 8 septembre à 19h.

Dubliners, work in progress

2011-03-15T21:55:00.000Z

# 19, Trie Daze Qu'on Dors

2011-02-22T15:56:00.000Z

The final episode for Multiprise but the dandy continues to sputter on with kom.post, this time in both english and français. There is only so long that one can talk before one must either shut up or step up and propose something. Obsessed as I am with identity, framed somewhere between singular experience and cultural contexts, the dandy has donated his drawers to opening up a space, virtual as it is virtuous, to explore our experiences, contexts and thoughts on this.

Watch this space www.kompost.me/dandy and consider contributing.

Bizarre Bazaar: Human Possibilities

2010-11-23T14:15:00.001Z

26th November till 18th December (Thurs-Sat 12h-18h)

in the Pallas Contemporary Projects

111 Grangegorman Road Lower, Dublin 7

Human Possibilities is a series of drawings/paintings in Chinese ink on A3 paper inspired by profile pictures form facebook. The profile picture is designed for a passport photo so that one can display a recognisable image of oneself what this virtual space is used for, is so much more, so much richer and infitely more meaningful.

In the Pallas these imagees are arranged a floating ceiling. A facebook wall without names just images.

Opening Thursday at 19h.

chinese ink A3

From the studio to the exhibition

2010-11-16T09:33:00.000Z

Art Chartrons 4th-14th November 2010

2010-11-10T13:49:00.000Z

le Garage Moderne, 1 Rue des Etrangers, Bordeaux. www.arts-chartrons.info

open everyday from 14h till 19h.

Vernissage, Wednesday, 10th November at 19h.

The paintings are large free standing installations who's structure is in dialogue with the building's architecture.

Using two different axes, I question who we are and how we articulate our idenities referencing the history of painting through the portraits of the Kennedy brothers and the uncertainty of what is represented. On the othre hand, I paint images from interior design catelogues creating furniture which represents furniture.

The Kennedy's have a different signification for different people and I find the gap that exists between their images and who they were fascinating. Young, beautiful, dynamic, arrogant, spoilt, womanizers: the question isn't to know who they really were but does it matter or is the image everything?

Living rooms and offices are the intimate settings for our very own exhibition. While before these spaces were constructed from inheritences, gifts and from furniture either made by ourselves or to order. Today, while they are our personal property they are no longer personal objects. The market allows us to not only appropriate furniture but the lifestyles in which we wish to idenitify ourselves or project ourselves.

Français

Partons de deux axes, je nous interroge sur qui nous sommes et comment nous articulons nos identités en abordant l’histoire de la peinture à travers les portraits des frères Kennedys et l’incertitude de ce que cela représente. De l’autre coté je peins des images d’intérieurs provenant de catalogues, un meuble qui représente des meubles.

Les Kennedys ont des significations différentes pour les gens et je trouve fascinant le gouffre qui existe entre leurs images et qui ils étaient. Jeunes, beaux, dynamiques, arrogants, gâtés et dragueurs: la question n’est pas de savoir qui ils étaient vraiment, mais est-ce que cela avait de l’importance ou c’est l’image qui compte pour tout?

Les salons et les bureaux sont des espaces intimes qui sont nos expositions personnelles. Jadis, ils étaient construits des héritages, des dons et des meubles faits par soi-même ou sur commande. Aujourd’hui, ils sont construits non pas personnellement mais avec le marché qui nous permet d’acquérir pas simplement des meubles mais des styles de vie auxquels nous pouvons nous identifier ou nous projeter.

#18, Le sport du matin

2010-10-11T10:05:00.000+01:00

The fourth installment in the diary of a dandy. The rest of multiprise is available on http://www.revue-multiprise.com/# . Learn French and enjoy.

# 17, Back with a Bottle and a Bird

2010-07-22T11:38:00.000+01:00

Human Possibilities, Damen Salon, Berlin. June 2010

2010-06-21T08:30:00.000+01:00

Part of the kompost festival, Berlin, June 2010.

Human Possibilities, Damen Salon, Reuterstrasse, Berlin

2010-06-04T18:11:00.000+01:00

This work is a response to the social sciences’ assumption that people can be reduced to a formula which is operational between preconceived limits. My vision is not concerned with explaining why people act in act certain ways but tries to understand who they possibly are or could be.

To explore this vision, I have used facebook’s profile pictures as a soft line of research which was conceived of with portraits in mind but has revealed itself as a means for people to be ‘autrement’. The images have been taken out of facebook in the form of Chinese ink drawings, referencing this tradition which is less concerned with representation than by what lies beyond the image.

This wall of images will be on display in the Damen Salon, Reuterstrasse from the 9th-13th June 2010.

For those of you unable to come, there is a sound piece, 'Leave a Message' which you can experience by telephoning +49 (0) 308 975 0702

Diary of a Dandy

2010-06-03T14:39:00.000+01:00

This is a column, I write in French for a cultural review Multiprise - http://www.revue-multiprise.com/# The voice is that of a nonchalant artist meandering through the motions of being it.

# 15 5 O'Clock Passé

#16 Where do they make the cocktale umbrellas?

2010-05-07T09:33:00.000+01:00

New York, March 2010.

Paintings from 'Damals vor Zwei Stunden' (25 x 20 cm, 2008) and the 'Human Possibilities' Drawings (A3, 2009) framed and hung on 16th Floor of the Radio City Building decorating the halls of Jacob, Medinger & Finnegan, LLP

2010-01-16T11:38:00.000Z

2010-01-16T11:32:00.000Z

2010-01-16T11:25:00.000Z

2010-01-16T11:09:00.000Z

2010-01-14T15:28:00.000Z

human possibilities 1.1 2009. chinese ink and acrylic on canvas

human possibilities 1.2 2009. chinese ink and acrylic on canvas

2010-01-11T22:20:00.000Z

Toulouse, 3 January 2010

The subject is everything. In politics, there is one question who/what is the subject? Everything else is relative.

What do I mean by subject? Here subject is probably best understood as that which voices, that which is capable of ‘parole’; uttering sounds which make sense to those who utter them, at the least. Grammatically, a sentence is made up of a subject noun, a verb and an object noun. We are always trying to understand who that subject is? Who is implicated or implied? Part of politics is playing with the subject; uniting us through a common identity, workers of the world or creating one through exclusion, the foreigners or the capitalists. They’re trying to get us to identify with the subject in the discourse, in their stories. The identity game, come on everybody it’s fun to play. Sociological imagination, some may say but this isn’t a professional sport but amateur living. Everyone has their own story, sound a bit too much like Milton Friedman; everyone is their own story.

The subject is not a function of the individual

The individual has become the basic unit on which the human sciences have founded their art. For political scientists, its the atoms which need to be counted and classed in order to know the truth. This truth, Friedman has fed with his philosophy of the famished individual ravished by insatiable desires. The most important thing about rational choice theory is not what it has taught us about individuals and how they act but how it has taught us to be individuals and as such how we should act. The outliars are just that, so says the travelling salesman peddling his wares at whorehouse bar; I lapidate those who don’t know the joys of owning your own.

The individual is a body that can be counted. We are all individuals but we don’t always act as individuals nor do we

want to. Me is an individual but I am a subject. Me and I are different but you is always the same; perhaps it’s because we can never perceive the other as different except in a physical sense.

Individuals are like crumbs but the subject is more like loaf, a baguette, a galette, a flute or a ficelle. You can’t make anything from crumbs, you can only imagine what once was. Bread and crumbs are all essentially the same thing but the form is different. Meaning is not merely a question of content but must take into consideration the different forms.

What are you trying to understand?

Political scientists and people are like pedophiles and children, they know children are going to grow up, they will loose interest in them but they just don’t want to see it. Political scientists are the same, they can only see people as individuals, anything else and they enter into a state of denial.

The subject is the evolution. through the subject we can understand how change is affected and what effects it has.

A concept as a state or as a flow?

A static concept is like a cross-section which allow you to understand the what and how something is ‘made up’ at a particular point in space and time. A fluid conceptualisation looks at how something evolves through space and time. A census is a good example of a static concept, the residents of a territory answer particular questions at, ideally, the same point in time. This allows us to build a picture of the state of things and hypothesis about the future using information concerning similar changes between previous states. Fundamentally, it doesn’t allow us to understand how or why decisions take place (beyond assuming that the subject, residents in this case, reacts to the event(s)). The importance of a fluid conceptualisation is to understand the subject as an evolution, not simply ‘subject to change’. These similar but fundamentally different conceptualisations have very different consequences when it comes to understanding reality. The static conception sees the subject as something which is reacting to external (who knows from where?) stimuli. While the fluid conceptualisation sees the subject as us which is constantly evolving and redefining the world around us. The question is which of these concepts allows us to better understand the world in which we live?

Finally why is there a writer writing this text and why is there a reader reading this text?

Simply, because the subject isn’t the other. I am the subject. And I want to understand where I come from, how I make decisions and what kind of a future am I making for ourselves? The question is who am I?