LAST EXHIBITION
SYLVIE ARLAUD & OTTO MUEHL
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Jan 29 - March 13
Mein Kampf I, 2015
Magazine-page (shredded), on acrylic glass-plate in wooden-frame.
21 x 30 cm
Source: Filmstill, "The Great Dictator", by Charlie Chaplin 1940,
Charlie Chaplin Archives and Taschen editions, Spring-Summer 2015
@Sylvie Arlaud, 2016
__________________________________________________________________________
Installation view „The Human Factor“, Viennacontemporary 2015.
Sources: Two children chairs, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR-Design of the 45-50ies)
& Erste Hilfe (shredded-book), Lehrbuch des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes, 1941
& Mein Kampf accompagné de commentaires (shredded-book),
par E.L. Michel, Paris 1938
& Kochen mit einer Mark (shredded-book), Dachau editions 1916/1929
Installation, Vienna, 9.2015, mixed media, 55 x 48 x 45 cm.
@Sylvie Arlaud, 2015/16
Political Objets Trouvés
of the early twenty-one
century
Since 2011, Sylvie Arlaud has been increasingly mixing
various media, involving collage, assemblage, installation, and
photo-performance. In her series Sensual Abstraction (2011) and
Feminine (2012), she undertook a very sensitive and humorous
introspection of her feminine identity, introducing an autobiographic
approach and some strong feminist aspects to her work.
This
included work on photo reproductions from material actions by Otto
Muehl in the 60s, a
sexual education book from France in the 70s,
and a current retrospective photographic volume
by Jeanloup
Sieff.
In contrast to these two previous series, in The Human
Factor she reduces every aesthetic intervention and focuses on
historical investigations. Orchestrating some fragments of
controversial realities put in an artistic context, she creates
political objet trouvés (found objects).
The title of Sylvie
Arlaud´s new eries refers to Graham Greene´s 1978 novel. The story
of the book takes place in the context of the Cold War. Being a
vehicle for human doubts — between professional duty and human
responsibility, conscience and setting aside — it describes a world
characterized by a culture of secrecy and manipulation, where people
are permanently confronted with disloyalty and the precariousness of
peace. It is obvious that the choice of this literary work is not
merely a coincidence.
The book is not only very applicable to our present time, it also makes some generally applicable statements about human behaviour and power structures. Above all, it doesn’t damn the individuals, but instead the deprivation of liberty in human societies.
In this way it corresponds perfectly with recurring themes in
Sylvie Arlaud´s work, strongly characterized by the mindset of the
Age of Enlightenment.
In The Human Factor, Sylvie Arlaud takes an
investigative approach, her artistic process approximating a
journalistic strategy. For her collage-assemblages, the artist
selects original images and texts from original documents, which she
applies in original or reproduction on paper or transparent foils.
All of her materials are literary finds possessing an intrinsically
significant symbolic meaning.
After their montage, they reach a much more emotionally charged
content with a stronger force of expression. Giving us indications
about some politically charged backgrounds, they emerge to their
objective, historical veracities with a provocative value whose
relevance is not limited temporally.
Furthermore, as an
inherent part of her artistic process and product, she meticulously
researches and
mentions every source of the utilized and exhibited
documents, which then acts as a form of knowledge transfer that her
historical résumés may require. On an interactive level, she
exhibits all the associated literature, allowing observers to inform
themselves about her chosen themes.
Notions of transparency and freedom of expression also get
symbolized. She uses transparent materials such as foils, and mounts
her works on transparent acrylic glass or glass plates. She installs
everything into vitrines or wooden frames without backgrounds. In
this way the works
seem to hang free and the background pages can
also give important hints regarding contexts.
After conceiving her collages, she allows inspiration to
introduce a sculptural level to her installations. Recycling literary
remnants, she installs them together with carefully selected
familiar objects (usually old-fashioned and highly symbolic),
which maintain a relationship to
the overall content.
Complementary to her more sober and intellectual collage-assemblages,
her sculptural installations
elicit strong feelings, such as
facing an "Autodafé", entering an area after bomb attacks
or an earthquake, or simply entering the flat of a chaotic and
intellectual peace activist...
Sylvie Arlaud´s work may not be characterized in a way that
reduces it to political art with elements
of visual art,
literature, and sculpture. It is a manifest in itself. It is about
freedom of expression and
liberty, ephemerality and manipulability
of information, the fragility of knowledge and the fragility
of
life. And it bases on her thirst for truth that guides her quest for
truth.
*The series "The Human Factor" is an homage to the
artist Mark Lombardi, (1951-2000) and a
reference to his highly
explosive sociograms.
Sylvie Arlaud, February/March 2016
&
Ambacher Contemporary Munich-Paris