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

Index: Curriculum Vitæ Biography Chronology Relations Atlas Bibliography & Press Index

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.

Index: P+ VIII – GR33C3 P+ VII – Rouge Noir P+ VI – Water Yam P+ V – Golden P+ IV – Lascaux P+ III – HUO25 P+ II – MLK40 P+ I – Drawings P+ N – Playing Labels

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.

Index: rt4a, We Are the Extraterrestrials rt4a, Galeries rt4a, To Japan rt4a, godart, Unreleased 2008–2014 rt4a, Ecco Beach (a plus o minus) rt4a, Monsters rt4a, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade Op 35 Wendy Version rt4a, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade Op 35 Half-Speed Version rt4a, Accelerate rt4a, Beware of Curator – Smithson Cultural Confinement rt4a, This Is Not a Tender World rt4a, Chiquito

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.

Index: 36° 58’ 29,28” N 24° 44’ 51,918” E 3,69 m FRSN10939134 MJJJ-S-AEB-CC-D2-S-061495E ISAN 0000-0007-924B-F002-Z-0000-0000-6 N/A x²+y²+z²≤r² 978-1419733383 36/G273/PA/19 38°06'39.75"N 13°22'28.96"E 10.5240/F8B1-3DCA-1436-CB8F-AAE2-H 10.5240/9ADB-C726-BF62-3D48-6C80-4 GBAHS0104435 Welcome to the Art World Plates Small Bowls Bowls Conservatism kills Scandale Drama <3 Foundation At the Dawn of the XXIst Century… IDEA Duty Dunno Lutz Toxic Masculinity Barcode Signature ID Accelerate Call Beware of Curator – Smithson Cultural Confinement This Is Not a Tender World Museum – Fraser Official Welcome Chiquito

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.

Index: Greffes 3 years, smart move Caravan Arthur Fouray Twin Peaks 2080 Frédéric Gabioud Arthur Fouray Baker Wardlaw Kiefer Hablitzel Prize Les Lèvres nues Accrochage Vaud Osmosis Lauren (Azur) Kasimir (Ciel) Morris (Saphir) aaafff (cendrier) Spectre Master of Arts HES-SO in Fine Arts Life is a Bed of Roses, (un roman) BOOM Synallagma Show #aaafff #000fff Art Hur Fou Ray

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.

Index: Objects Entourage II

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.

Index: M arter, to art, kunsten, artarre MM

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.

Index: Baby Camp-Views Pre-Natal Phase A Painting on the Wall Missing Information

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.