Work from the Collection

Real Remnants of Fictive Wars I

Date: 2004
Medium: Video
Materials: 35 mm film transferred to video
Dimensions: 19:24 minutes
Collection: Lafayette anticipations - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin

This film documents an action carried out by the artist in nature near the town of Chelles in the Paris suburbs. Cyprien Gaillard emptied fire extinguishers and let clouds of artificial fog evaporate between the trees, as if a building had been destroyed. The viewer is thus placed in an ambivalent situation, torn between the seductive power of the beauty of the scene and the awareness that this intervention remains a form of vandalism simulating a process of degradation. Gaillard follows in the footsteps of Robert Smithson, the leading figure of land art from whom he drew much inspiration, and takes up the notion of entropy as defined by the artist, that is to say the irreversible transformation of nature towards chaos. Through these images, which can be read as landscapes of forthcoming ruins, Gaillard positions himself as an archaeologist of the future and presents a vision of the irreversible traces left by human beings on nature, revealing their emptiness, but also all their beauty.

Text written by Marianne Tricoire as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.


Exhibitions

Antidote 4
La Galerie des Galeries, Paris (France)
from 09 Oct to 06 Dec 2008
Cyprien Gaillard, Real Remnants of Fictive Wars I
Les Eglises, Chelles (France)
from 31 May to 24 Jul 2008