Era Violence Cools
Z33 Art Center, Hasselt, Belgium
22 Nov – 13 Dec 2015
Site specific installation presented in the group exhibition The Way We Look at the Other Space
curated by Jolien Dirix assisted by Christina Seyfried
Rodrigue Mouchez’s practice is diverse and goes over categorizations endeavors, taking roots in various mediums ranging from sculpture to drawing, performance and installation. Suggesting that transformation of matter and the idea of contamination are part of his working materials, Rodrigue Mouchez builds through his work a broad yet precise vocabulary referencing the 60’s Judson Dance Theater’s performances, finance’s ‘conceptual’ power on value or Mexican pre-hispanic myths linked to the afterworld.
In his installation titled Era Violence Cools, Rodrigue Mouchez uses everyday objects and situations extracted from a wide range of spheres, from the domestic to the financial market or to the own artist’s production studio, creating narratives correspondences and a playful confusion between their logics. The artist juxtaposes found elements with items that were produced specifically in a setting that enhances their different states, temporalities or forms: Real scale televisions casted in plaster are staked in a metal rack, broken pieces of the same televisions are carefully placed on newspaper and painted silver, wax remote controls are displayed in the rack with glasses filled with tea that has rotten, transport sheets, a functioning kettle with water boiling, a metal displays holding a burned double page of ‘The Financial Times’ or large strips of unprinted paper of the same newspaper used as wallpaper.
By creating a specific space in between a personal interior, a vitrine like space or a type of production studio, Mouchez raises the question of value within the installation. The diverted utilization of the staged materials - plaster, aluminium, pink paper – tells a reversed narrative of the works transformation through destruction, and opens elusively to a broader context of perception. And so the installation features partially damaged plaster televisions stacked in the exhibition space, large broken parts, debris and dust resulting from the manipulation and the breaking of the moulded televisions. The human scale processes that are staged in Mouchez’s installation are subtly informing the visitor he large strips of unprinted pink newspapers are glued to the walls surrounding the installation, coloring the installation’s background with its presence and so becoming an essential part of the installation.
Jolien Dirix
Text published in the exhibition catalogue, The Way We Look at the Other Space, Z33 Art Center, Hasselt, Belgium December 2015
