Jean-Luc Moulène at Modern Art Oxford (2 Sept -
25 Nov, 2012) and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
(Draft material for Photomonitor, published here to coincide with the last weeks of the extended Thomas Dane exhibition)
(Draft material for Photomonitor, published here to coincide with the last weeks of the extended Thomas Dane exhibition)
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| From 'Strike Objects' |
Jean-Luc Moulène (born
Reims,1955) came to
prominence as a photographer in the 1990’s and is probably best known for three
series which explore – among other things – the nature of labour and the
relationships between commerce and art: Objets de Grève (‘Strike Objects’, 1999-2000), goods manufactured on the
assembly line by workers on strike, and sold in the parallel economy of the
black market in order to help fund their cause; the closely related still life
inventory of Produits de Palestine (‘Products
of Palestine’, 2002-04) for which he photographed consumer products from the
occupied territories, which sanctions prevented from circulating as part of the
world market in the way they now circulate as photographs; and the somewhat
notorious Les Filles d'Amsterdam (‘Girls of Amsterdam’, 2005, included
in last year’s Paris Triennial), which examines identity at work while also
aiming to combine the historically separate genres of portraiture and
pornography. Moulène depicts prostitutes – to whom he showed the relevant 19th
century examples - under their stage names in poses which give equal and unified
emphasis to face and genitals.
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| From 'Girls of Amsterdam' |
Moulène, however, has enough variety in his enigmatic
photographic practice alone to justify his 1999 statement that ‘I think of my
shows as group shows’[1]
– an assessment which has been made all the more plausible since then by his
decision to exhibit a wide range of films, drawings, paintings and sculptures
(which he calls ‘Objects’ to emphasise their status as products) alongside his
photographs (or rather ‘Documents’, as ‘they are between media and fine art, and so are
called post-photographic documents and not photographs’[2]). Moulène has collectively titled his exploration of
materials—manufactured and found, industrial and organic— ‘Opus’, so reinforcing the link to
manufacture which has been a constant – indeed, Moulène spent a decade working
for the naval arms company Thomson.
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| From 'Products of Palestine' |
The
range of Moulène’s work as a photographer is largely explained by his
interest’s deriving not from his surface subject matter, but from the social
and economic factors of which they are Documents, and from how the images are
used and circulated as a result of their differing roles as media reportage,
advertising or fine art – ‘unspecific objects but specific means’[3] is one of his slogans. Similarly, his Objects set out to explore an
underlying language of geometric forms and their mathematical expression. In
both cases, it might be said, he starts from inside and tries to go outside. He
also dances, as he himself has put it, between two extremes: ‘on the one side
poetry, which is an invention of language with no structure; on the other side
the total formality of mathematics. I don’t like the middle. So it’s poetry or
mathematics… but art can be both[4]’. Or to put that, perhaps, another way: ‘the
main function of an artist is to work on chaos and freedom: all the rest is
left to politicians[5].’
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| Installation at Oxford, with blown and cast knots |
So it is that Moulène’s recent Oxford and London
+Varia+04.jpg) |
| Blown Knot 6 32 (Borromean) Varia 04 |
The
topographic figure of the knot has recently become important for Moulène. He’s
interested in how its mathematics has been used by scientists to describe
natural phenomena, and in Lacan’s use of the three elements of the Borromean
knot to represent the interdependence of the three orders of the real, the
symbolic and the imaginary. Moulène
describes knots as ‘tools to describe complexity’, and adds that ‘my utopia for
artworks is to create tools[6]’.
Yet the sculptures themselves seem to cut through all that in favour of the
resulting aesthetics, to move from inside to outside and from maths to poetry.
The three-coloured knots, in particular, are quite a feat of glass-blowing –
commissioned, in line with Moulène’s principles, through the channels of
commercial manufacture rather than artistic outsourcing. Their key characteristic is that no two of
the three rings are linked on their own, but together all three are linked, and
that leads to an immediate beauty.
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| From the series 'Monochromes / Samples' |
If the knots generate complexity only to cut through it, bringing order
to turbulence and chaos, then the ongoing series Monochromes / Samples (2011–) starts at the simple end but proves
to have its complexities. Moulène uses a
palette knife to slather the ink from everyday BIC biros over a glossy board.
Black, red, blue and green feature, but not yellow because BIC don’t make it,
even though that – which is another topic – is a special colour for Moulène.
That points to the industrial logic of the monochrome process, which seemed in America to parallel Dan Flavin’s nearby us of
standardised industrial lighting, but felt more literary in Oxford Italy
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| Stressed (Yellow) |
The Stressed series (2012)
consists of a square metre of mirror set beside a square metre of brightly
coloured lycra which has been nailed so that it’s stretched to appear oblong.
This visual paradox amalgamates concerns from the knots and the monochromes.
The stressed element exposes how the underlying topography can be distorted by
the time it reaches our perception, picking up the psychological undertones of
the knots and relating to another theme of Moulène's emphasised at Thomas Dane: conflict . Stressed also effects a
separation of the monochromatic and reflective aspects of the Biro works.
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| The Three Graces |
Yet
perhaps the most striking presences in Moulène’s British shows were more
directly human. The Three Graces (2012)
stand naked on a local hilltop in a nine minute silent black and white film,
projected across a whole gallery wall in Oxford Paris
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| 'Le Fontaine des Amoureux' |
Moulène, then, plays complex games in a serious way, with none of the irony or kitsch which is common in contemporary art. I’ve room to mention only part of his diffuse stream of work and ideas. Topics I haven’t said much on include systems of control; the derive and the nondescript; the eye as viewfinder; mysticism and the sun; the anthropology of cultures; his literary inspirations; and the circulation of documents and objects.
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| Installation at Thomas Dane |
So what pulls all this together? Perhaps the relationship between art and commerce; the analysis of complexity; the movement from inside to outside; chaos and conflict; and the judgment of beauty – all touched on above. But Moulène has also spoken frequently about other potential candidates, suggesting that it’s another strategy of his to float multiple explanatory frameworks. Those include the centrality of the body; and ‘negation as a means of affirmation[8]’, by which I take it he means that one can define a position by showing what it is not, as when he pulls a knot from its surround to leave its position defined by the clay. By taking a critical stance on much of reality, one can by implication define a core body which has a different status. That body, I suggest, is the body of the artist looking, of an artistic consciousness seeking to understand. Ultimately, what Moulène’s many approaches and frameworks demonstrate is the complex and elusive nature of our relationship to the world.
Images courtesy the artist / Modern Art Oxford / Thomas Dane
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