Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Elk’s Rest, 2012. Installation, wood and various materials, 250 x 120 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist and
Galerie In Situ / fabienne leclerc, Paris.
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil
INCLUDE ME OUT
26 October 2013 – 19 January 2014
at Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne,
Vitry-sur-Seine, France
“INCLUDE ME OUT†is constructed around a simple, yet essential question: is it Time going through us, or are we going through Time? Although Time is calculable, it is, by essence, ineffable. How can we translate the experience of the elasticity of Time? The exhibition unfolds like a initiatory trip, taking the visitor through the artist’s recent creations and key works. Upon entry, one is invited to abandon their certitudes and dwell in a zone of doubt, the territory of art. From darkness to the light and back again, the question of blindness is broached. What do we see? How do we see? How can we represent the unshowable? Auguste-Dormeuil’s works mark steps in a circuit through territories of suspense, like so many tools for analysis. They are the plastic representations for reflection and the questioning of our relationship with reality.
Paradoxically, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil creates images of an absence of images, stills. Rooted in historical facts and urban legends, his works are so many indicators of and springboards for histories. When asked about the title “INCLUDE ME OUTâ€, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil explained, “In Jean-Luc Godard’s Mépris, when the the producer invites Fritz Lang to have a drink, Lang laconically replies, Include me out. With a sort of insolent elegance, Godard establishes all of the pardoxical complexity of Lang’s gesture. Beyond this, to me, “INCLUDE ME OUT†is a powerful way of expressing a simple idea, something we have all experienced. It is not just because I live in a society that I must adhere to it; it is not because I watch television that I have to adhere to it… and so on and so one for so many other things…â€
Born in 1968, since the middle of the 1990s Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil has worked at unmasking the invisible structures that inform our relationship with what was, even then, a reality covered by intense media broadcast. An artist on the lookout, he ceaselessly questions the production of images planned for the political space. The paired concepts of visibility/invisibility, luminosity/obscurity, memory/oblivion, what one knows/what one believes, evoking without showing, saying without narrating, are a series of approaches that allow for the taking in of Auguste-Dormeuil’s works, works that give form to the codes that
organize the flow of images in our lives.
The artist’s early work was essentially oriented toward new cartographies; the security obsessions of systems of information, surveillance, and social control of the public sphere. In recent years, it has taken a more metaphorical turn.
Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne
Place de la Libération
Boîte postale 147
94404 Vitry-sur-Seine cedex
France
macval.fr
Opening hours
Tuesday – Friday: 10h00 – 18h00
Saturday, Sunday and holidays: 12h00 – 19h00
Closed on Monday.
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, “INCLUDE ME OUT” exhibition view 2013 at MAC VAL. Photo: Martin Angyroglo. Courtesy the artist and MAC VAL
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, I was there, Power Blackout, February 21, 2012, Montréal, 45°30’26.50″N_73°33’54.33″O, 2012. From “Black Out” series. Lambda print on Diasec mounted on aluminum. 109 x 203 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie In Situ / fabienne leclerc, Paris
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, I was there, Power Blackout, April 17, 2012, Berlin, 52°31’21.26″N_13°24’47.90″E, 2012. From “Black Out” series. Lambda print on Diasec mounted on aluminum. 109 x 203 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie In Situ / fabienne leclerc, Paris
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, “INCLUDE ME OUT”, exhibition view, 2013 at MAC VAL. Photo: Martin Angyroglo. Courtesy the artist and MAC VAL
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, “INCLUDE ME OUT” exhibition view 2013 at MAC VAL. Photo: Martin Angyroglo. Courtesy the artist and MAC VAL
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, “INCLUDE ME OUT” exhibition view 2013 at MAC VAL. Photo: Martin Angyroglo. Courtesy the artist and MAC VAL
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, “INCLUDE ME OUT” exhibition view 2013 at MAC VAL. Photo: Martin Angyroglo. Courtesy the artist and MAC VAL