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Annaïk Lou Pitteloud
Selected Works



Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Two Works, Dolores, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, 07/01/12 - 18/02/12

Both works presented in this exhibition play with the notion of measurement and appropriate aesthetic, conceptual or theoretical references, playfully using the context of art history as a flexible grid on which reflections can be placed.

Entering the exhibition space the viewer is presented with a floor plan of which one of the works mentioned remains invisible.
This work, Transposition, appears as a schema on the floor plan.
It appropriates a theory published in 1963 called Proxemics that aimed to establish the measurable distances between people as they interact.
This study is included in the work’s description as the material and a footnote to the title proposes to use this material as a means to question semantics and subsequently reinterpret the whole theory.
Considering that over the last 50 years the interventions of the private sector resemble what was formerly related to the domain of the public powers, insidiously transforming the public space into private space, this transposition of a 60s theory wonders how to redefine the public territory nowadays.

The second work, Ruler, a half white, half black hair stretched in an acrylic container evokes a voodoo-like object in a natural history cabinet or a tool measuring an individual’s life span. By starting with white and ending up with black, this life line naturally tempts one to mentally flip the object around its central point, reversing the reading order to get back to a chronological storyline.
The minimalist look of this object creates friction with the almost shamanistic narrative it generates, playing on expectations and appearances.

These two works share an attempt to reflect on notions of sculpture and time.
They both appropriate aesthetics that recall certain genres and put forward specific formal aspects to be loaded with a narrative. That way they mix different theoretical fields (conceptual, aesthetic, literary, sociological, and historical) to broaden possible readings of the way a work is embedded in its time-frame.
While Transposition presents a sociological diagram from the 60s as an invisible sculpture in an expanding form resembling the strategies from the same era only to have it fold back onto itself, Ruler reduces the sculpture to a compact object and merges a minimalistic form with an almost animistic content.
In this manner, far from wanting to reproduce academic demonstrations, these works use an historical background not only to comment on the idea of sculpture but to measure a socio-political shift taking place over a precise period of time. They try to adapt to a new card game largely set by conceptual strategies of which the deck has completely changed.


2012, Dolores, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, NL, Two Works, exhibition views▲, ▲►

Transposition
2012
floor plan and acrylic card holder
inkjet print on A4 copy paper



Ruler
2011
hair
acrylic container 53.6 x 2.5 x 2 cm


Ruler detail

L’insurrection qui vient¹
2011
ink, volume needed to print one copy of the book
2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm

1 The Coming Insurrection was written by The Invisible Committee and published in 2007 by the French publishing house La Fabrique. This anarchist essay hypothesises the collapse of capitalist culture. Seen by the authors as an axis for a radical critic of western society, the French riots of 2005 serve in their analysis as an example of a significant change in the way of leading a social struggle.
Attributed to the Tarnac Nine by the French police, this book was considered an ultra left terrorist writing. The incrimination of the Tarnac Nine and their supposed link to this book raised a great political polemic in France.



8 out of 20
2011
5'32'' colour video loop without sound
still


2011, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, NL, Rijksakademie Open, installation view

A static bird’s eye view overlooks a playground.
The camera observes a character coming into this setting until he goes again.
The title sets a countdown of the number of times this youngster shoots and scores versus the number of times he misses the goal.
This title perversely underlines what one cannot avoid thinking watching such a sequence, namely the idea that one is observing the chance that this decor might transform into a jail for this character in a near future.

Agitprop
2011
limits of a format
stack of cardboard sheets
A1+


Propaganda
2011
limits of a format
stack of poster paper
A0+

Empty structures made of cut-outs draw a limit on the floor. By framing a part of the exhibition’s context, they underline the outside and the inside as the same continuum. Addressing the notion of a missing message they construct a reflection about the means of distribution of an idea. Is the potential message limited by the format, or is this message limiting the format?
These two questions gravitate around a lacking answer, showing the impossibility to relay on established practices to continue thinking out of the frame.



What it Does
2011 (to be actualised every time the work is being shown)
glossy white adhesive vinyl letters
approx. 85 x 36 cm



A white text made of glossy letters is applied on the wall.
Starting at the height of a title card and going down to the floor, it is build under the form of a classical title: Title, date, material.
At first sight one does not really know what this text addresses, is it describing a missing piece or, owing to the fact that all the words are adjectives, is it not talking about the very fact of doing art?
The date seems to be the only reliable element, while the title and the material keep on commenting on each other, constantly throwing one into what happens before a work of art is finished, or what is provoked once it has been done. Therefore, the piece is present but it speaks about the pre and the post production of art.
This work, as an answer to the piece
‘It...’ by Robert Barry, does not try to describe the art object but the effect it has on its maker.

Index (∞ parts)
2011 - ?
aluminium frames 31 x 22.3 cm

The index is an ongoing work which, far from wanting to develop a linear indexication, is a form under which to encapsulate thoughts that are recurrent in the practice. It is a way to mention reflections that take shape in many other works and it does therefore function as a sketch book.



Implex (Index part I)
2011
stained paper
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

A crumpled piece of cheap grey paper lets a smudge surface. This smirch makes a straight millimetred grid appear. An outcrop that seems to reveal the implicit construction hidden behind any form, it being the one of chance.



How to Kill Time (Index part II)
2011
postcard sleeve and magnet
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

The title of this work is twofold. On the one hand it addresses the very gesture of nonchalantly fixing a found postcard pocket in an aluminium frame, contradicting the very saying expressed in the sentence it shows. This gesture questions of course what a work of art is but it mostly addresses the process of making art which often relays in doing nothing with a lot of attention.
On the other hand it addresses the red one-liner quoting Mister Karl Valentin for the use of packaging and therefore wonders about the passage of time as a way to kill the initial intentions of the artist.




Theory of Practice (Index part III)
2011
ballpoint pen on paper
simultaneously writing with the left hand towards right and with the right hand towards left
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

This work is an attempt to join oppositions in order to visualize a missing central point that could constitute a new tool of reflection.



[...], having always preferred the kitchen to the living room.¹ (Index part IV)
2012
architectural metric scale model and spray paint
1:50
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

1 After Niklaus Meienberg, Reportagen aus der Schweiz and other writings



IF¹ (Index part V)
2012
Letraset
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

1 After Pierre Bourdieu’s description of the role of the investigator who should be able “to put on on the place in thought” of the investigated.



Sum¹ (Index part VI)
2012
adhesive letters and notebook page
aluminium frame 31 x 22.3 cm

1 “What’s left after what one isn’t is taken away is what one is.” Diane Arbus’ Notebook (No.I), 1959



Stumble
2011
spray paint and fat on paper
grey wooden frame 88.6 x 62.4 cm

This left over piece of paper once used as a background to spray paint an object that should have been the actual artwork remains inadvertently as a balanced abstract composition organised around a missing centre.

Evergreen
2011
5 Inkjet prints and silkscreen behind glass
aluminium frames 31 x 22.3 cm


Evergreen series view


Bankruptcy Poster
2011
edition of 4 A3 posters + numbered envelopes
silkscreen on card
english edition recto verso


Bankruptcy Poster edition view recto / verso




2011, Deuxpiece, Basel, CH, Edition, installation view during the opening


2011, Deuxpiece, Basel, CH, Edition, exhibition view during the opening ▲
and for the duration of the show ▲►

Title List
2010
silk screen on 80g A4 paper


Title List installation view

An edition of 1’000 copies of a title list is offered as a free artwork.
Although usually printed at the last moment and considered to be without value, here the title list is given the status of an autonomous artwork.
By doing this, a supposedly insignificant accessory paradoxically becomes a decoy for the norms of the exhibition. It validates the invisible conceptual working time that usually does not yield a tangible result.




1994-2005, 72’341km, 12h08
2010
Ford Lincoln Town Car, Executive Series



2010, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, NL, Rijksakademie Open, installation views ▲, ▲►

Although the title gives objective information about the car the evident traces of abandonment generate several possible narratives. These narratives remain unspecified, evoking a cinematic suspense.
Through this title, the viewer is made aware of an abstract use of language such as ‘they’ or ‘it’ that points the lack of precision when it comes to descriptions of any entity of power.


Non-Specific Target
2010
6’24’’ colour video loop without sound
still



2010, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, NL, Rijksakademie Open, installation view
2010, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, NL, view of the shooting ▲►

This silent movie focuses on the phenomenon of a verbal protestation, meticulously observed through a mechanism that resembles a reversed Panopticon.
In a set that recalls a model situation, a young woman whose origins remain unknown launches into a diatribe, altering calm and anger within a controlled act.
From a constant distance the camera makes a circular movement around the character, creating a feeling of alienation, where one hovers between witnessing a case of hysteria or a legitimate claim.

Curve of Pursuit
2010
Inkjet print
(5x) 75 x 100 cm


Curve of Pursuit series view



A series of photographs was taken during the shooting of the movie Non-Specific Target. As opposed to the durational medium of the movie the photographs show the effect of the diatribe in still images where anger becomes a matter of sculptural detail.
The silence of the performance is underlined by the properties of the photographic image; the reduction of the character to a pictorial motive is directly linked to its muted discourse.


Information Panel
2010
digital montage
Inkjet print
127 x 200 cm


Information Panel detail

The subject of this image, an empty information panel, is shown as a modernist composition.
The photograph itself has extended from its traditional position within the frame into its ‘passe-partout’ through the data transmitted by the plotter, such as cropmarks and color labels.
This inclusive manipulation underlines the idea of a subject emptied of its meaning to become a mere pictorial motive, closing the image in a self-referential loop, where motive and making constantly relate to each other.




Glossary
2010
pencil on A4 copy paper

4 neologisms hover uncannily between a quality of written words and drawn images.
These words could describe new concepts within different specific fields, but they could also address the speculations of the artist as a producer and the expectations of the viewer as a co-producer of an artwork.


 
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