Pascale Marthine Tayou, Le Verso Versa du Vice Recto, paper, 280x700x300 (cm), Art Basel 2009, © GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins
First look
It is a monster, a little elephantous and not really identifiable, composed of a myriad of these strips of paper bordering the computer listings, and which sometimes takes time to cut out…. Here, somebody has taken the burden for us, on a large scale !
Second look
For Pascale Marthine Tayou, “great wizard of utopia” and recycler of the detritus of our society, it is “… a formless monster that everyone can identify, with whom one can play or make an enemy. It is a reaction to the administrative system, a maze of norms that ultimately dominate their master … “.
Look at history
At first sight, an idyllic scene: nevertheless, behind the London deer park from Greenwich park (1809), Turner dares to represent for the first time in the history of painting a sky disturbed by the pollution of the chimneys of factories. The first “shadow on the blackboard” of an industrial society just born.
Look at our society
The “monster” that looks for the corporate world is the excess of information (humanity produced in 2009 as much as … the 5000 years that preceded 2009 !), too often printed on paper … A sentinel of our effectiveness and environmental awareness at work ?