Blaise Drummond
dal 19/10/2011 al 2/12/2011
Segnalato da
19/10/2011
Blaise Drummond
Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris
"Towards a unified theory of everything". Covering the major themes of architecture and landscape, the artist questions our relationship with the world, through a set of paintings, sculptures and drawings.
Blaise Drummond
Towards a unified theory of everything
Nature Boy, Revisited
Nature meets ersatz nature, and an unsettling, mutant identity is the upshot. Such is
Drummond’s MO. For Drummond, iconography of nature becomes both a topic of concern and
a post-modernist plaything. The artist deals, coyly and concurrently, with actual nature, sen-
timental imagery of nature, and our genuinely conflicted relationship with the natural world,
when even the most eco-conscious among us grapple with hypocrisy.
While there are certain serious, cautionary aspects to Drummond’s messages, not
only the specific text but also the whole conceptual approach to his art, the cheeky and frag-
mentary quality of his presentation keeps it from being merely glum or preachy eco-art. In a
way, his art brings awareness to the barriers and misconceptions we encounter while trying to
come to grips with the incredible tension between humanity and its habitat. In another way,
though, he’s a deft juggler of light and dark, a deadpan entertainer with a half-serious sermon
to deliver.
TOWARDS A UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING is the title of this new exhibition at
galerie Loevenbruck by Blaise Drummond. Covering the major themes of architecture and
landscape, he questions our relationship with the world, through a set of paintings, sculptures
and drawings. To take some examples, in the painting Colors for a Large Wall (Caracas) (oil and
collage on canvas, 190 x 270 cm), Blaise Drummond depicts El Paraiso, residential buildings
built by Carlos Raul Villanueva in Caracas in 1954, and Ellsworth Kelly’s painting of 1951, which
partially lends the work its title. La Façade Libre (Live Together in Perfect Health and Happi-
ness (oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 162 x 213 cm), sites the villa Stein in a landscape deri-
ved from a Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet, picked up by the artist from the pavement. ‘All suf-
fering soon to end,’ it proclaims. Les Bricoleurs (oil, collage and chalk gesso on wood, diptych,
36 x 46.5 cm (each)) illustrates the make-do and mend spirit of the bricoleur that exemplifies
the artist’s practice. ‘You fiddle around in the studio and end up making some things. Painted
landscapes, landscapes of paint. Some spillages. Incidents and accidents along the way. Fro-
zen liquid moments and a collection of bird’s eggs,’ as he says himself,
The exhibition gathers the aforementioned works as well as others to be discovered, works
that Blaise Drummond suggests «fall like so much into that space between the real and the
ideal.»
Image: "Colors for a Large Wall (Caracas)"(détail), 2011
Private view: Thursday 20 October 2011, 6-10 pm (FIAC 2011: Galleries Night Out)
Galerie Loevenbruck
6, rue Jacques Callot - Paris
Hours: Tues-Sat, 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. and by appointment
Free admission