Systems

systems



arthurfouray.systems maps ways of experimenting with art. Inspired by Duchamp’s La Boîte verte (1934) and conceived as a dynamic and interface-driven book, this project traces, retraces and contextualises a singular body of work. It constitutes an active archive of an entire production since the age of one, solo or in groups, as an artist or curator. It is a Gesamtkunstwerk, simultaneously exhaustive and discontinuous. The intent is to offer a range of interpretations, envisioning projects and periods as autonomous universes within non-hierarchical chronologies. My logic is irregular.

3413 Images - 69595 Words - 130 Web Pages
Including: 3 Albums - 5 Books - 9 Bowls - 1294 Cards - 203 Collages - 2 Colours - 28 Curated Shows - 9 Decks of Cards - 650 Digital Media - 551 Drawings - 2 Editions - 10 Engravings - 7 Fine Arts School Displays - 9 Group Shows - 9 Illustrations - 5 Installations - 60 Instructions - 9 Interventions - 1 Interview - 9 Masks - 4 Models - 12 Music Release Covers - 1 Music Video - 25 NFTs - 112 Objects - 96 Paintings - 187 Photographs - 12 Plates - 16 Sculptures - 37 Silkscreens - 9 Singles - 26 Sketches - 4 Solo Shows - 34 Songs - 12 Texts - 6 Toy Series - 716 Tumblr Posts - 2 Typefaces - 4 Verbs - 1 Video Game - 4 Videos - 4 Wall Paintings - 9 Websites

P+
2012, 2024–2026
1108 Images - 7913 Words - 10 Web Pages
Including: 1294 Cards - 203 Collages - 9 Decks of Cards - 357 Drawings - 60 Instructions - 25 NFTs

P+ is a game of associations: a corpus of possibilities in which prospects and projects can form storyboards, narratives, scripts, events and exhibitions. The first deck dates from 2012. Since 2024 I have put drawings, images, colours and propositions on cards, one deck after another. A card does not have to become a work. I keep the proposition.

Music
2022–2025
12 Images - 9656 Words - 13 Web Pages
Including: 3 Albums - 1 Music Video - 12 Music Release Covers - 9 Singles - 34 Songs

Since 2022 I have released music as rt4a: three albums and nine singles. The four singles of 2022 each came with a painting of the same title; Unreleased 2008–2014 gathers twenty-two tracks from before rt4a, some made with my brother as godart. Accelerate condenses the Psycho score twentyfold, where Douglas Gordon stretched the film to twenty-four hours; the two Scheherazade albums slow Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite to half speed, played in real time on synthesisers.

rt4a
2021–2026
151 Images - 5065 Words - 33 Web Pages
Including: 9 Bowls - 27 Paintings - 12 Plates - 2 Sculptures

rt4a began when a phone transcribed a nickname, ‘Arty Fouray’, in 2013–2014: a more Warholian gesture than I would have thought, and almost Cagean. Since 2021 those four characters have signed my paintings, objects and recordings. The name attributes a work and says little about the person, so one signature can hold several ways of working.




D*************
2018–2019
*** Images - ***** Words
Including: ** *****, * ********, * *******

D************* *** ** ***** ************ ****** *’********* ************* *** ******** ** ***** ** *’***.

Screen
2017
45 Images - 1996 Words - 1 Web Page
Including: 1 Book - 36 Photographs - 12 Silkscreens - 1 Video

SCREEN (2017) is an artist’s book that came out of the research for the exhibition Spectre (2015). It joins the flipbook, painting and silkscreen in one cinematic object: every page shows a silkscreen on canvas, and the colophon runs like the credits of a film. Silkscreens on cushions and a video carry the same images beyond the book, between painting, print and cinema. The publication acts as an interface.

Exhibition Making
2015–2026
710 Images - 20496 Words - 29 Web Pages
Including: 1 Book - 28 Curated Shows - 11 Texts - 1 Website

Making and organising exhibitions for others is essential in the lives of artists. Exhibition Making gathers the solo and group shows I conceived and organised with others, successively as part of the teams at Silicon Malley, DOC!, LUMA Arles and LUMA Westbau. Each page keeps the show as it was made public: its artists, its dates, its texts and their authors.

Arthur Fouray
2013–
103 Images - 12228 Words - 20 Web Pages
Including: 2 Colours - 5 Drawings - 2 Editions - 2 Fine Arts School Displays - 8 Group Shows - 2 Installations - 44 Paintings - 5 Sculptures - 25 Silkscreens - 4 Solo Shows - 4 Wall Paintings - 3 Websites

Under my own name, a pillow, a bed base or a ladder could give a painting its shape. In the #aaafff series an object disappears behind a monochrome and comes back in the title; in #000fff a wall painted chroma-key blue always hosts another work. What holds an image up becomes part of what it says.

a plus o minus
2013–2015
122 Images - 965 Words - 4 Web Pages
Including: 9 Interventions - 112 Objects - 1 Website

a plus o minus, written a + o –, was an artistic and curatorial practice I shared with Nastassia Cougoulat Montel from 2013 to 2015. We took objects of pop culture as musical or linguistic signs: clipped pack shots, captioned objects. We looked, selected, extracted, juxtaposed and presented. Entourage II (2014) took place in a nightclub.

mmm
2013–2016
18 Images - 8643 Words - 4 Web Pages
Including: 1 Book - 1 Interview - 9 Photographs - 716 Tumblr Posts - 1 Typeface - 4 Verbs - 1 Website

mmm, which I called the inverse of www, began as an online diary: 716 posts from April 2013 to October 2015. It then became an artist’s book, M (2015), and nine photographs, MM (2016). Its typefaces were borrowed from artists and art institutions, so private notes arrived already dressed in someone else’s visual language.

Pre-Natal
2011–2013
757 Images - 2181 Words - 7 Web Pages
Including: 602 Digital Media - 1 Drawing - 5 Fine Arts School Displays - 1 Group Show - 3 Installations - 16 Paintings - 108 Photographs - 1 Text - 1 Video Game - 3 Videos - 3 Websites

Pre-Natal gathers my pieces from 2011 to 2013, a playful critique of ‘contemporaryart’ in which installations develop like conversations and labels become soft invitations.

before ARTS
1991–2011
386 Images - 452 Words - 1 Web Page
Including: 2 Books - 48 Digital Media - 188 Drawings - 10 Engravings - 9 Illustrations - 9 Masks - 4 Models - 9 Paintings - 34 Photographs - 9 Sculptures - 26 Sketches - 6 Toy Series - 1 Typeface

before ARTS holds what I made from the age of one, in 1991, until 2011, before ECAL. Childhood drawings, monotypes, masks, toy series and research comics; a first Photoshop image in 1998; then academic drawing, calligraphy and engraving at Penninghen, sculpture and 3D at the Ateliers de Sèvres, and Fahrenheit 451, a book set in a typeface I drew. Some habits return later; others lead nowhere.