Camille Henrot

High Reliefs. Plaster and sandstone mouldings of plastic bags
Camille Henrot, 2009

'This project brings together two sovereigns of time: geology – the result of a huge length of time -- and the short-lived moments in which a plastic bag takes a given shape before time sweeps it into another. It is literally anachronistic by design. Spatially, the pieces combine two scales: the smallest detail and geological erosion. The project is both anecdotal and historical: the slightest anecdotal object becomes historical with time. Time transforms objects and gives value to the most common objects, but they are doomed to disappear in the long run. This work is connected to Egyptian art; high-relief art appeared before low-relief art. Just like Egyptian art was about surviving through time and extending life in a static eternity, the plastic bag is doomed to survive in a momentary shape. G. Didi Huberman's organic interpretation of plasticity may elucidate the work further when he says plasticity “brings body and style together in the same question of time: survival and metamorphosis will eventually characterize the eternal return itself, shape calling to the shapeless”.

Camille Henrot website

Henrot's reliefs of the plastic bag, a fossil of modern material can somehow relate to my own project Woeman. There, by combining modern language on the surface of a historic building is somewhat similar to the concept of the modern material de-bossed on the sandstone. In my case, language is embossed on the stone to give a sense of the detachment of the female identity conversing with these buildings where as High Reliefs are being plastered inside to give a feeling of historic bond with the material.

Valérie Jouve

Les Situations. photographie couleur.
Valérie Jouve, 1999

'(...) Jouve focuses on the many different countenances presented by walls seen as materials. Collapsed stone walls, exposed rebars, and the still bright-coloured wallpaper of a room where somebody once lived convey both the passage of time and the remnants of human involvement. By overlapping these fragmentary images, the artist brings into relief the environments of people who see or walk past these walls every day. 

Rather than the dazzling and glitzy aspects of the city, Jouve picks out people and townscapes that display a certain pathos, and by doing so, encourages viewers to contemplate the relationship between people and the urban space.'

Mori Art Museum, Tokyo 

I became familiar with Jouve's photographic works while visiting the Marcel Duchamp Prize retrospective in Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Her works are dealing with walls as anthropologic aspects of life where we can see people's identities being reflected upon them.

image source: les inattendus.eu

Spectrum of Woeman

Some drawings in continuation with my recent project Woeman. The sketches are ideas regarding further exploration of the phallic character of authority buildings in the city of London.

Japan

Last month I spent 10 days in Tokyo, documenting Japanese culture (as much as you can find in a metropolis).  Photographic films are still in the process of development but here are a few of my drawings with a japanese calligraphy pen I obtained whilst being there. The pen, due to its brush, allowed me some more freedom and so drawings of various surroundings and landscapes have deployed a carefree nature.