On the occasion of the exhibition DUST, Histoires de poussières, from Man Ray et Marcel Duchamp, we are happy to renew with David Campany, co-curator of BAL’s opening exhibition Anonymous: Unnamed America in Photography and Film back in 2010. The British critic and historian takes an offbeat, poetic look at a seminal work in the history of modern and contemporary art: Élevage de poussière (Dust Breeding) by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp (1920).
This image is an enigmatic object whose every facet unsettles and mystifies the viewer: its subject—a battlefield or a heap of powder?; its scale—an aerial view or a close-up?; its nature—a landscape or an earthwork?; its author—Man Ray and/or Marcel Duchamp?; its status—a work of art or a document?; and its title—View Taken from an Airplane (1922) or Dust Breeding (1934)? The open-ended array of meanings and interpretations explains the crucial role this image has played in the history of creativity. The present exhibition and the accompanying book guide us through some 150 works and objects by Man Ray, Georges Bataille, Aaron Siskind, Sophie Ristelhueber, Gerhard Richter, John Divola, Xavier Ribas, Eva Stenram, Mona Kuhn, Jeff Wall, as well as aerial views, forensic images, postcards, etc.
Dust Breeding holds clues to understanding the works of its successors: the exploration of temporality, encounter with chance, spatial indetermination, ambivalent origins, the overlap between photography, sculpture, and performance, between the formal and informal, and between the infinitely distant and infinitely large. Welcome to the infra-thin, welcome to DUST!
EXHIBITION
A Handful of Dust
Until January 17th, 2016
BAL
6, impasse de la Défense
75018 Paris
France
http://www.le-bal.fr
