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18/5/2006

Eva & Adele

Galerie Jerome de Noirmont, Paris

Lasso

The artistic procedure of EVA & ADELE is based on a daily performative concept, in which life and art are so intertwined that they melt into each other. Since their union in 1991, The Twin Hermaphrodites in Art half male and half female, have forged a reputation by their many appearances-performances in international contemporary art events, performances which, together with their photographic diary (realized each morning with a Polaroid), have served as the basis for their artistic creation.

During their three former exhibitions at the gallery, EVA & ADELE unveiled to us the works coming from their creation "beyond the boundaries of gender" and of epochs; indeed, in addition to being "hermaphrodites" by artistic intention, they proclaim that they "come from the future" and direct themselves under the concept of Futuring, which implies that you must project yourself into the future to appreciate their life and art, as the present cannot define them. With canvases, pastels, watercolours, photos and videos, they then showed us the many artistic media of this specific creation, which uses their self-portrait to define its concept. In this way, EVA & ADELE ask fundamental and philosophical questions about our contemporary society, on the role that we are playing, on the obsession with logos (or brands), on history in terms of “epochs" and on time as “sequences".

In the LASSO exhibition held at the gallery from May 19 to July 12, EVA & ADELE go beyond plastic “transcriptions" of their photographs and photographs of their performances, and provide a genuine demonstration of their artistic procedure, expressed in as many strata as the canvases shown here have layers.

Apart from the picture entitled Lasso, the 14 canvases of this exhibition, from the Transformer - Performer series, were all created in 2005 and produced using the same process. The first layer is made up of collages of drawings, which represent 15 years of artistic creation and were designed during the performances of the artists. For while performances are fleeting, drawings are perennial… On these collages is painted the logo of EVA & ADELE (their self-portrait as Siamese heads). The final stratum of the picture is an erotic image designed either as a reference to the history of art (notably to Cocteau), or to the universe of the strip cartoon (in particular, erotic strip cartoons from the years between 1920 and 1960), with very thick lines and very dense colours. Furthermore, in this series, the frame in white American crate is done by the artists.
In the works exhibited previously, the logo/self-portrait of the couple occupied a visual place that was important. Here, it disappears and the regard is absorbed by the successive reading of the various layers and images. As in the transparencies of Picabia, in which the artist offers us the possibility of seeing a multitude of images declined in as many layers on one and the same canvas, the pictures of EVA & ADELE presented in LASSO require multiple and transversal reading. It is this transversality that tells us about their artistic procedure. These large canvases show us the transformation of the two artists into a single and unique artistic entity; the logo is here a symbol of the unity of EVA & ADELE, and so also becomes the symbol of their artistic future.

The 15th picture is the eponymous painting of the exhibition, which functions independently from the others. It is an oil on canvas, and is divided into two identical inverted parts, as in a mirror, alluding to the logo/self-portrait of the artists in inverse copies. It shows a cowboy handling his lasso above the title "LASSO" and corresponds to the total abstraction of the concept of the exhibition in a spirit inspired by Duchamp; only the erotic connotation of the lasso appears as evidence in it.

This exhibition shows us to what extent the art of EVA & ADELE, whose form of expression remains unchanged, reveals gradual and intrinsic development and transformation. It stresses the importance of their performances, which does not limit itself to appearances alone but that it also resides in interior attitudes and thoughts, which the spectator must share in order the better to appreciate the concept of this “non standard" art.

Galerie Jerome de Noirmont
38, Avenue Matignon F - 75008 Paris
monday - sunday 11am - 7pm

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