Artist: Richard Fauguet

"If there is one thing Richard Fauguet has got us used to, it’s his use of puns and set phrases in the names of his exhibitions, which, in an area of art where seriousness reigns supreme, can be disconcerting. His new exhibition at the Art : Concept gallery is no exception to this (pseudo) rule, and, from the outset, Pipeshow makes us smile with the promise of an alluring performance."

As casual it may seem, the title is of no coincidence. This shameless use of words is matched by a play on shapes and objects that has always been the artist’s trademark. Cliché expressions find their match in pre-made objects in a kind of readymade that the artist simply had to assemble (obviously, that is easier said than done).

In the past, for example, his work has comprised glass bowls, plates and carafes which, once assembled, came to represent different characters or objects, sometimes with a confounding sense of realism. Then there were the ‘Vallauris style’ ceramics which, in the same way, and through simple accumulation, formed various creatures with playful expressions. There were also the flues and other chimney parts that created a smoke and mirror effect (let’s sidestep any obvious word play here): when placed end-to-end, these components formed various scenes in a wire-like fashion as if they were drawings in space. This offers us the perfect transition to talk about drawing, the artist’s other main discipline. While he seems to have total freedom (he does), his practice is also regularly shaped by the use of pre-existing forms, in this case those provided by rubber stamps, of which the artist has an astronomical collection. Mouths, flowers, eyes, carafes (again), suns, geometric shapes, fans, fish, bees, fingers, chains, hands, seashells, explosions, dresses, cacti, glasses, sandals, stars, screws, bow ties, chickens, aubergines… The artist has become the virtuoso of a technique he has created for himself: to form new figures, some of the wackiest, most inconceivable ones.

Once again, the artist’s humour – a little corrosive, on this occasion – is at work. However, it would be a mistake to view these works solely in terms of humour. The artist’s other major concern is his relationship with art, its history, and the various players who have written that history before him. This relationship with the art of others sometimes manifests itself explicitly; take, for example, his extraordinary series of silhouettes of key masterpieces of sculpture made from cut-out Venilia which, like ghosts, come to haunt the exhibition rooms they are displayed in. This relationship with art is to be conceived as continual and necessary in relation to a field that he shares with illustrious predecessors: it is a field that deserves to be explored, redefined, shaken up, and even overturned. Humour is a rational part of this approach: it is the way in which his work – with goodwill – challenges all forms of established convention.

The Pipeshow confirms this in more than one way. For a start, there’s the exhibition’s poster, in which the shadow of the artist smoking his pipe casts a strange silhouette on the wall. It's a joyful take on the famous portrait of Rodchenko, the centenary of which Fauguet is celebrating in his own way. Then, just as we are pondering the subject of the pipe in art beyond that one Magrittian reference, we come across a drawing, not dissimilar to a caricature, depicting Picasso, one of Fauguet’s key references. In it we see Picasso as a matador sporting a mammoth/logo from the (then still) famous French supermarket chain: a mammoth with a fully erect tusk. We are all aware of the recent controversy surrounding Picasso’s relationship with women, so let us focus on pipes instead: they take pride of place in the centre of the gallery. The stars of the show, they appear lustfully and casually on their respective pedestals. Once again, magic happens, and the artist, with a form of clairvoyance that is unique to him, succeeds in creating scenes out of thin air. These interwoven pipes once again place us in a realm of smoke and mirrors: what are we to make of the appearance of two legends of French cinema who, like the Picasso ma(moth)tador, are executed in broad strokes on Albal paper? Simply put, we certainly weren’t expecting them to be there and, in his quest to disrupt and destabilise – “at some point, things have to spin out of control” – Fauguet surprises us more than ever. Illuminated by a new series of coloured opalines – another simple form of assemblage, this time in an abstract style – the two stars shine in all their glory as our unlikely companions in Fauguet’s extraordinary Pipeshow.

Xavier Franceschi