2009 : SING IN / SIGN OUT, FRONT DESK APPARATUS, NEW YORK

FRONT DESK APPARATUS : NOTES OF INTENTIONS

“on the level of the work, they contain in themselves the negation of the situation in which they find themselves”
Marcel Broodthaers

Acting as a fabricated situation, Front Desk Apparatus presents the re-arrangement of a particular construct. The interiority of the space is dependent upon props disrupting its linear composition. At the same time, this composition links paradoxically to the weathered exteriority of its shell. What should function as a residential dwelling does not.

Rather, the primary application is that of an office; an office for work and the transmission of information and material. The props occupying the space perform real functions associated with production, while others remain inert, lifeless objects; facsimiles of what one would find in the home, the gallery viewing room, the institutional lobby, or a furniture showroom. All of which, we are not opposed to acting as a stand-in.

In a similar fashion to Marcel Broodthaers’ Decors (1974-76), the apparatus rejects the formalization of artistic contexts, by way of domestication – producing the evacuated air of an austerely arranged film set, created out of a pre-existing condition, a working tableau that does not use neutrality as a departure point. Situated in the company of a work environment, the art intervention does not exist in isolation. Rather, the way it is perceived and interpreted depends upon the larger frame in which it is seen. Ambiguity, paradox and contradiction are keywords associated with the apparatus. We are simultaneously disinterested in conforming to conventional models, but also avoid acting in opposition to them. The intent is not to act as an ‘original’, but to experience an equivocal condition of the fetishized object in space. Resisting the seduction of the white cube, the counter-site supports a non-neutralized interiority, and the synthesization of simulated contexts. The working method of the apparatus is open, flexible and respondent to the unexpected.

The apparatus is in constant motion regardless of physical presence. Interventions are spontaneous, in irregular secession, and adapt to the inherently ongoing processes of space, and its negation.

Rob Teeters

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PRESS RELEASE : PINK

The ‘cut’ paintings of the Colmar-based art employer Lucie Fontaine are intensely sexual objects. For many viewers, their raw colored surfaces ruptured by deep vertical gashes strongly evoke female genitalia. Fontaine’s violent cutting of the canvas has also been compared to the muscular gestures of male ‘action’ painters such as Aaron Young. What such interpretations fail to grasp, however, is the critique of gender identity, and in particular masculine identity, which is at the heart of Fontaine’s oeuvre. However, Fontaine relies on an inversion of diametrically opposed notions of maleness and femaleness rather than any deconstruction of the opposition itself. Fontaine’s critique first emerges in the artist’s depictions of the male body immediately after Italy’s social defeat of Tangentopoli. Fontaine’s limp and mangled clay warriors splashed with oozing layers of reflective glaze directly challenge the hard, ballistic ideal of the masculine body theorized in the proto-fascist writings of the Italian Postmodernist poet Corrado Levi. Drawing on the work of Hal Foster and Jeffrey Schnapp on the representation of fascist masculinity, Fontaine developed an alternative model of maleness to that encountered in the official culture of Berlusconi’s Italy. Accordingly, her work gives insight into the extraordinary transformations in male body imagery that took place in avant-garde and official cultural circles in Italy during the first part of the 21st century.

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PRESS RELEASE : GREEN

Front Desk Apparatus proudly presents Lucie Fontaine, “Sign In / Sign Out.” Lucie Fontaine is an art employer that lives and works in Colmar, France, once the hometown of sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, designer of the The Statue of Liberty (officially titled, Liberty Enlightening the World). The city is renowned for its well-preserved old town and charm, its numerous museums and architectural landmarks, including a 12-meter high replica of Liberty Enlightening the World.

As it is partly for the practice of Lucie Fontaine, the project occurs in the form of déjà vu. Mimicking the structure of the inaugural show at Front Desk Apparatus, Lucie Fontaine has chosen the installation as a readymade form.

Description of the works:

Inserting her signature Pink Cuts, accompanied with a pattern grid of red dots – Lucie Fontaine establishes the inescapable relationship between art and commodity while submitting to the references of Roy Lichtenstein, Niele Toroni, John Armleder and Damien Hirst. The highly sexualized Pink Cuts (self portraits perhaps?), symbolically refer to human flesh and acts of masochism while raising questions of gender identity.

Master/Slave, situated in the footprint of a pedestal from the inaugural project (at the exact dimensions), supports objects produced by Lucie Fontaine and her employees fabricated from the by-products of labor. The support, rather than acting as neutral display, has been commodified, decorated with sand paint, and elevated to the status of art object.

In Tabula Rasa, office mail has been scattered across green Eco fur that could be said to represent grass, the most apparent example of a rhizome. The bombardment of paper communication will continue to accumulate through the duration of the installation, while the rubber band ball will continue to amass bands from which the post delivery comes packaged. The obligatory nature of the receiving and accepting mail is illustrated as an unsolicited form of labor.

Synthesizing art and communication, an invitation for Sign In / Sign Out has replaced an image of Immanuel Kant whose Critique of Practical Reason, concentrates on questions of ethics while The Critique of Judgment investigates aesthetics and teleology.

The planted palms, an element of the Front Desk Apparatus permanent decor and a reference to Marcel Broodthaers’ Decors installations, have been substituted with facsimiles. The silk palms sit in ceramic pots, produced by Lucie Fontaine and her employees. The pots rendered informality is contrasted by the physicality associated with labor acquired to make the functional vessels. The houseplant, a symbol of domesticity, connects back to Lucie Fontaine’s activities in Milan and the quaint allure of Colmar.

Where an orchid once rested on the black dining table, silk roses have substituted. Paying homage to the work of Corrado Levi, who – during his show “Il Cangiante” curated in 1986 at the PAC in Milan – demanded to have fresh roses delivered to the installation on a daily basis. The vase, designed by Italian Postmodernist Ettore Sottsass, holds thirty-six faux roses, which this time, will last forever.

Using an identical monitor and placement for the video included in the inaugural show, Sample Covering Shape features two looped music videos. The first, a cover of Sting’s Rise & Fall by Craig David featuring Sting, the second, Shape of my heart by the Sugarbabes, which includes samples from Sting’s Rise & Fall. The diptych embodies issues dear to Lucie Fontaine, such as covering, sampling, collaboration, conflated authorship and pop sensation.

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Distributed in two forms, the press release unveil the Will (Green) of the project and the second, an edited version of a text by Anthony White on Lucio Fontana, can be described as the Representation (Pink).