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MATTHIEU LAURETTE's Interests
General
***** CONTEMPORARY ART : Conceptual, Minimalist, Institutional Critique, Pop etc.
(...) "I feel like any word added to "art" is just usually unnecessary sub categories (i.e Young British Art, video art, social art, performance art, body art, land art, fax art, eat art, noodle art etc...and maybe why not still to come spaceship art or iPod art! Who knows? The list is endless...). The point according to me is more whether it is interesting art or not, whether it is relevant art or not. Anyway of course it is easy to answer that all art is inherently political, which I hope would be always true. When I hear "political art" I must admit I usually think it is going to be patronizing. I wish it could provide more often tools one could use to think and would transgress more limits and reach different audiences.
I€™m more interested in artists that have a social and political conscience at work than in-your-face 'political art'! (...)"
in "What the world needs now... Art and Politics: 22 artists respond." Frieze (London), no. 87 (November-December 2004):76-89.
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Matthieu Laurette talks about starting his artistis career on a TV show.
(LBi Artists Talks series, London -15 January 2007)
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Matthieu Laurette talks about his Money Back Products project.
(LBi Artists Talks series, London -15 January 2007)
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Matthieu Laurette talks about his Citizenship Project for Venice Biennale in 2001.
(LBi Artists Talks series, London -15 January 2007)
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PLIGHT 2
(2007) installation, 401 carpets, automatic grand piano Yamaha Disklavier, sound (piano transcription The Internationale anthem), dismountable wood construction, paint and neon light.
'Déjà Vu: The 2nd International Look-alike Convention at Castello di Rivoli, Poster (Prototype), Design by Mario Milizia, Milano', 2001
Matthieu laurette & Dia Art Foundation present DÉJÀ VU - THE SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL LOOK-ALIKE CONVENTION AT DIA'S FALL GALA (2004).
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WHAT DO THEY WEAR AT FRIEZE ART FAIR?--21-23 October 2005-- Daily guided tours of Frieze Art Fair led by international fashion expert Peter Saville, Isabella Blow and Kira Joliffe & Bay Garnett. Commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects 2005. Photo by Polly Braden
At a time when art has become a full-blown industry, artistic production that taps into mass culture still sends a flash of disgruntlement across many faces -- for isn't artistic imagination and reflection one of the last bastions against mediocre commercial culture, against the spectacle? The irony is that this is precisely how the spectacle, if one was to generalize commercial culture under that name, projects the role of the artist: romantically removed from intervention. Increasingly over the last decade, contemporary artists not satisfied with that ascription have not only produced representations of, but immersed themselves into mass culture, opening up the potential of turning the knowledge that comes from looking at how capitalism functions into something that is not just capitalism. Matthieu Laurette's work bespeaks this fundamental insight.
Since 1993, when Laurette first appeared on the French TV game show Tournez manège (The Dating Game) and, being asked what his profession was, replied 'artist', he has continued to use the media as his artistic means of infiltration and re-circulation. His point, however, is not simply to stage subversive media stunts. Rather, vice versa, he tests the elasticity of what contemporary art can -- almost literally -- deal with as a practice.
The abstracted circulation of money for goods for money, or money for money is fuelled by the prospect, of -- obviously -- profit. Matthieu Laurette discovered a strategy for not only turning the principle of value increase on its head, from gain into regress, but to make precisely that the subject of a friendly family game show. From an art project budget in Bilbao, Laurette devised a programme for Basque TV, El Gran Truque (The Great Exchange, 2000): the idea was that in a phone-in auction people could offer to buy objects in exchange for a car offered by Laurette -- the highest offer would be accepted, and then in turn be presented the following week for another exchange, and so .. a few months the series of swaps finished with the presentation of six blue glasses. What started with a car worth a small fortune ended with something you might find at a car boot sale.
Laurette's piece bears a family resemblance with Robert Barry's Invitation Piece (1972-73): with a simple structural insertion -- invitation cards being sent out that refer from exhibition to exhibition without exhibiting anything but that; exchanging commodity for commodity with a clear prospect of 'burning' rather than gaining value -- the logic of the respective circulation is twisted and turned. While Barry parodies art's logic of market value with art's conventional means of circulation (invitation cards), Laurette does so with the general logic of market value in regard to consumer products (using mass media). Another example is Produits remboursés/Money-back Products (1993-2001), which involved the consummation and subsequent reimbursement of food products that feature statements like 'satisfied or your money back' systematically feeding, literally, on the companies' gimmicky trick to promote their brand -- which in turn was fodder for the media reporting about the 'Freebie King.'
This strategy of turning economic and political rules of circulation against themselves also informs Laurette's Citizenship Project (1998 - ongoing), in which he investigates the requirements for obtaining legally passports of countries all over the world, and then makes this information available on a website. The experiment ultimately is a way to test the limits of the ideological foundations on which the laws governing access to citizenship are based.
For The Louisiana Repo-Purchase (2003-2004), broadcast by a local TV channel, New Orleans passer-bys were asked whether they were aware of the possible revocation of the 1803 treaty which legalized the sale of Lousiana by France to the US -- the fictional info, during the Iraq war, prompting patriotic anti-French statements. In a similarly spoof vein, Laurette's Apparition: The Today show, NBC, 31 December 2004, (Guy Debord Is So Cool!)(2004) renegotiates the critique of mass media: we suddenly see, amongst love message banners being held up by the audience of the outdoor-broadcast of the infotainment show on Rockefeller Plaza in New York, a pink poster stating 'GUY DEBORD IS SO COOL!' The fluffy statement ironically plays on the fact that ritualized postures of aloofness from the spectacle -- in reference to Debord's Society of the Spectacle from 1967 -- run the risk of becoming an empty, worn-out part of what they criticize. As with his numerous Déjà Vu celebrity look-alike conventions hosted on the occasion of art openings, Laurette is never the superior manipulator but mingles with his subjects on eye-level, as if reminding himself of the crucial question: what's for whom, and how?
Joerg Heiser is co-editor of FRIEZE Magazine; and a writer and curator. He lives in Berlin.
in Notre Histoire. Exh. cat. Paris: Palais de Tokyo/ Paris Musées, 2006
Matthieu Laurette recent selected exhibitions and projects include Let's Make Lots of Money, Blow de la Barra, London (2006) [Solo]; Notre Histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); Day Labor, PS1/MoMA, N.Y (2005) ; Populism, CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania; Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, (2005); The Today Show, Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris (2005) [Solo]; Comodities, Deweer Art Gallery, Otegem (2004) [Solo]; Biennale de Pontevedra, Pontevedra (2004); Matthieu Laurette : Prix Ricard S.A. 2003, MNAM-Centre Pompidou, Paris, (2004) [Solo]; Publicness, ICA, London; GNS (GLOBAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM), Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Propaganda, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris (2003); Less Ordinary, Artsonje Center, Seoul; La vie au fond se rit du vrai, CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Art and Economy, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2002); Form Follows Fiction, Castello di Rivoli, Torino; Plateau of Humankind, 49th Venice Biennale (2001); Voilà, Arc-Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, El Gran Trueque, Consonni, Bilbao (Solo); Plan B, De Appel, Amsterdam; Au dela du Spectacle (Let's Entertain), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000); Patchwork in Progress, Mamco-Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva [Solo]; Crash !, ICA, London (1999); Applaus, Casco Projects [Solo], Utrecht; Premisses, Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York (1998). He received in 2003 the RICARD S.A. Award for the most representative artist under 40 y.o. in the French scene.
His works are in several public, corporate and private collections in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, USA, including Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; FNAC-National Fund for Contemporary Art, Paris; FRAC-Collection Aquitaine, Bordeaux; FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier; Ricard S.A., Marseille/Paris; The Speyer Family Collection, New York; William Grant and Sons Ltd, Dufftown.
He has taught as guest professor and visiting lecturer at several art academies and universities including San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; Staedelschule, Frankfurt; ECAL, Lausanne; ENSBA, Paris; Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona; Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh and ESAV Geneva and gives lectures and seminars worldwide including Tate Modern, London; the Bronx Museum, New York; Musée du Quebec, Quebec; Musée National d'Art Moderne-Centre Pompidou Paris; Kunst Werke, Berlin; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon and Kiasma, Helsinki.
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