Daniel Firman
dal 7/4/2006 al 3/6/2006
Segnalato da
7/4/2006
Daniel Firman
Le Grand Cafe' Centre d'art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire
Toucher: Coule'
Toucher: Coule'
curated by Sophie Legrandjacques
One could say that Daniel Firman makes a faceless kind of sculpture, literally and
figuratively speaking, inasmuch as its formal aspects and the discourse developed
are particularly mobile. For, essentially, his interest is in precisely that “moving
space of art which, in his case, begins with the axis of the body of individuals so
as to extend itself as far as the outermost reaches of their objective and mental
projections (the commodities that model them or normalise them, the memories that
constitute them)"1. Thus the body casts that he makes are always engaged in a
dialogue with the objects and the signs that characterise a contemporary reality (a
car, an item of clothing, a computer icon...). Amid this relationship of constant
exchange and reciprocal communication between beings and things, Daniel Firman
chooses to bring to the surface the symptoms of a faulty organisation, of a
weakness.
The exhibition Toucher: coule' extends this preoccupation with previously
unseen works, each of which in some way tests the space of the Grand Cafe'.
The title of Daniel Firman’s exhibition offers some clues as to its interpretation.
Toucher (to touch) refers to the ideas of physical contact and holding
regularly invoked in past works (the manikins with accumulated objects on their
heads). Toucher, however, must also be understood in the sense of
to affect. The show presents a world in which objects are
affected, struck, in turn blown away and exploded.
Coule' (poured) invokes directly the technique used for body
casting, as well as the pooling of matter.
Daniel Firman has thus far presented a perception of reality based on a physical and
mental relationship between bodies and objects. The well-known manikins carrying a
mass of objects on their shoulders are in fact the result of lived experience (a
performance in which the artist is carrying the aforementioned mass, comparing the
resistance of his body with that of matter). This relationship articulated an idea
of encumbrance and of compacting, generating a specific spatial and organisational
system. In part this is the case for Traffic (2002), presented in Toucher:
coule' and the sole piece of work pre-existing this show. The piece is
emblematic of Daniel Firman's work in the sense that it puts into action the
scattering-gathering principles that the artist has often exploited in his
sculpture. They concern the archaic gestures that regulate the relationship of the
body to the elements: gathering-scattering, contracting, extending..., theorised by
the dancer and choreo
graph Rudolf Laban.
At the Grand Cafe', Daniel Firman inverses the relational modality of bodies
and of objects and suggests a perception of the real on the mode of an expansion.
Space is tested by playing out the questions of sculpture: fullness, emptiness,
density weight, mass, tension, softness. Daniel Firman's world is a world of
cohabitation. He is particularly attentive to the way in which very different
presences coexist. He elaborates a visual language just as complex as that generated
by the modern city, operating by disruptions. A doubt creeps in: are beings and
things in their rightful places?
Opening date: Saturday, 8th April from 11 pm
Le Grand Cafe'
Place des Quatre Z'Horloges - Saint-Nazaire
Hours: Daily (except Monday) 2 pm to 7 pm, Sunday 3pm to 6pm