Arthur Fouray Index



The exhibitions I made as Arthur Fouray from 2014 to 2017, in Switzerland, France, Germany and Italy: installation views, labels, credits and press. The #aaafff and #000fff series return from one show to the next, beside the pillows, bed bases, ladders and tables that served as supports for painting. A work can come back in another exhibition without coming back to the same situation.


Arthur Fouray Greffes






Greffes
Group show
Villa Medici
Rome, Italy
16.11–23.11.2017

Curator
Pier Paolo Pancotto

Photographs by Christophe de Rohan Chabot & Arthur Fouray

Special thanks to Alfredo Aceto, Paolo Caravello, Arthur Godard







Two MDF wood boxes, both of the same size (92.5 × 40 × 10 cm), covered with a blue canvas (type ‘aaafff’).

One side (92.5 × 40 cm) displays an image or print on Dibond, laminated onto plexiglass (about 21 × 29.7 cm). It features the image of a lizard. Its eye spews blood.

The opposite side showcases a one-way mirror. Its dimensions should be slightly smaller than 92.5 × 40 cm. (…in progress…) These two boxes would thus be relatively identical objects. They are meant to be placed vertically on the floor. However, such a decision should be finalised during the installation. Also, there is a consideration if they should be displayed together or separately, either in the same room or in different spaces, and if there is an intent to make each more autonomous. At its core, through this repetitive effect, one object refers to the other, activating memory, signalling, and reminding of its twin. In the same way, a marker or a reference object sets the context in its entirety… 

Christophe de Rohan Chabot & Arthur Fouray



Christophe de Rohan Chabot & Arthur Fouray
senza titolo / (X5m4mjB-1) (#aaafff)
2017
Dibond, canvas, acrylic, braces, dark glass
67.5 × 30 × 12 cm
courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa & Galerie Joy de Rouvre & the artists



Christophe de Rohan Chabot & Arthur Fouray
senza titolo / (X5m4mjB-1) (#aaafff)
2017
Dibond, canvas, acrylic, braces, dark glass
67.5 × 30 × 12 cm
courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa & Galerie Joy de Rouvre & the artists


Greffes, Christophe de Rohan Chabot and Arthur Fouray, 2017 — Project document
Greffes, Christophe de Rohan Chabot & Arthur Fouray, 2017 — Project document (PDF)


Index

Arthur Fouray 3 years smart move




3 years,
smart move
Group show
Galerie Joy de Rouvre
Geneva, Switzerland
11.11–23.12.2017

Special thanks to Guillaume Maraud, Joy de Rouvre, Pierre Belloni, Frédéric Gabioud, Baker Wardlaw

3 years, smart move was a group show at Galerie Joy de Rouvre in Geneva. It opened on Saturday 11 November 2017 and ran until 23 December. I had shown at the gallery a year earlier, in a three-person show with Frédéric Gabioud and Baker Wardlaw. At the end of 2017 the gallery began to represent my work, and did so until it closed in 2022. I showed two works. #000fff (4:3), from the #000fff series, is a wall painting in chroma-key paint, 120 × 160 cm, in the proportions of television. It was made to host a preview of Guillaume Maraud’s Sans titre, shown in Paris from 8 December 2017 to 27 January 2018. Chroma Key, Titanium (Andy) (2015) brings together four Andy (Chroma Key) and three Andy (Titanium), in acrylic and cotton duck on pillows.



#000fff (4:3) (Guillaume Maraud, Sans titre, (08.12.2017–27.01.2018, Paris, (preview)))
2017
chroma-key paint, Sans titre, (08.12.2017–27.01.2018, Paris, (preview))
120 × 160 × 3 cm
courtesy of Édouard Montassut & Galerie Joy de Rouvre & the artists





Chroma Key, Titanium (Andy)
2015
acrylic, cotton duck, pillows, 4 Andy (Chroma Key), 3 Andy (Titanium)
variable dimensions
courtesy of Galerie Joy de Rouvre & the artist


Index

Arthur Fouray Caravan




Caravan
Solo show
Aargauer Kunsthaus
Aarau, Switzerland
26.08–12.11.2017

Curators
Yasmin Afschar
Katrin Weilenmann

Special thanks to Marielle Chabal, César Chevalier, Lauren Coullard, Marine Coullard, Philippe Decrauzat, Madeleine Schuppli, Aargauer Kunsthaus Museum Team



invitation card

Invitation card PDF
Caravan 3-2017, Arthur Fouray, Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2017 — Invitation card.pdf





PRESS RELEASE
PDF

Arthur Fouray (b. 1990) combines the approaches of major, opposing twentieth-century avant-garde art movements in his work: readymade, Minimal and Conceptual Art, as well as monochrome painting. He also studies current developments in-depth and it is these wide-ranging points of reference that provide the basis for his artistic concepts.





In his CARAVAN exhibition the Lausanne-trained artist places his works in the foyer of the Aargauer Kunsthaus, literally at the interface of interior and exterior space. The glass façade designed by Herzog & de Meuron is the starting point for his site-specific intervention in which he plays with the architectural situation of the foyer as well as its use as a place of encounter. The artist covers the museum’s front with curtains made of cotton that are painted bright red. This material was first used by the Abstract Expressionists in the U.S. and competed with linen canvas as the classic picture support.





Arthur Fouray’s diverse reference system is evident not just on a formal level: oftentimes the names of artists who served as inspiration for a work are, in fact, mentioned explicitly. His window installation Torres (Pyrrole) was inspired by a group of works by the Cuban artist Félix Gonzalez Torres (1957–1996). In the 1980s, Torres arranged light-blue curtains in an exhibition space; called Untitled (Loverboy), they allude to the romantic relationship of two men. For Fouray, too, the fabric panels are a means of staging. Torres (Pyrrole) is preceded by a work from the aaafff series. This combination of letters refers both to the artist’s initials and to the shade of colour featured in many of his works, which in the computer-based colour identification system used by Fouray stands for a precisely defined light violet blue. The painting shows on one side the titular colour hue, while its other side is covered by a mirror. When the visitor steps in front of the latter, the glass façade becomes a stage and the viewer becomes the protagonist of this mise-en-scène.





INTERFACE. WELCOME TO A FELIX ROOM <3: with these words in the present booklet Arthur Fouray provides the motto for his installation. He invites us into a spatial structure that is both confined and porous and in which the curtain and objects function as interfaces between two systems. Felix refers not just to the aforementioned artist, but also means ‘happy’ or ‘lucky’ in Latin. The heart icon on the back stylises this positive message.

Yasmin Afschar, Katrin Weilenmann










PRESS

Agenda — Aarau, Aargauer Kunsthaus: Arthur Fouray, 2017 — Kunstbulletin, Exhibition listing, no. 11/2017 (November 2017), p. 126; advertisement on the inside front cover — PDF · full issue (archived)
Astrid Näff, CARAVAN 3/2017 — Arthur Fouray, 2017 — Aargauer Kunsthaus, Exhibition essay on CARAVAN 3/2017, pp. 52–53, Jahresbericht 2017 — aargauerkunsthaus.ch · PDF

Index

Arthur Fouray 2080








MMLXXX
Solo show
zwanzigquadratmeter
Berlin, Germany
21.05–18.06.2017

Special thanks to Éric Emery, Ascanio Cecco, Louis Ziéglé, Christophe de Rohan Chabot, Alfredo Aceto

2080 (MMLXXX) was my solo exhibition at zwanzigquadratmeter (ZQM) in Berlin, from 21 May to 18 June 2017. In the interview Eleonora Castagna published in Droste Effect on 9 June 2017, I called it ‘more a curation than a solo show’: each piece has a relationship to another artist or to specific works by other artists. The press release is the voice-over of the 1961 trailer for Last Year at Marienbad, which ends by asking the viewer to watch carefully: an object, a gesture, a decor. The wall painting #000fff (Natural Vision) (IFP), from the #000fff series, with #aaafff (existenz) reenacts Grande Surface by IFP in chroma-key blue. #aaafff (existenz) has the size of one element of a Donald Judd stack; its unknown object, a piece of plastic washed up on a Normandy beach, lay on the floor beneath it. Opposite, nine fluorescent red Genkins hung as one piece, Genkins (Fluo) (3×3). The charcoal drawing A Brief History of Curating copies a still from Johnny Mnemonic, Robert Longo’s film. The blue wall, the green pillows and the red Genkins pinpoint three subjects: the projection, the interface and the viewer. The pillows covering the floor were silkscreened with pages of SCREEN, the catalogue of Spectre and the guide to 2080; I launched the book at Motto Books on 18 May. I wanted ruins on the floor. The title was meant to be read before the show: a year, a projection. Louis Ziéglé made the poster after blockbuster posters, with the works as its characters.



Louis Ziéglé
MMLXXX exhibition poster
2017







Press Release

Last Year at Marienbad
Trailer voice-over
1961
Text excerpt 

A large international hotel …
… immense and baroque …
… with sumptuous but frigid decor
A stranger wanders from hall to hall … 
… down endless corridors …
… in search of a woman
He tells her they met …
‘Last year …’
Try to remember,
… that they had a passionate love affair …
… that she herself set this rendezvous …
… and that he is going to take her away.
But she claims she does not know him.
Impossible, I tell you. I have never even been to Frederiksbad. 
He insists, but she protests even more.
What room? I have never been in any bedroom with you
You will not remember …
… because you are afraid
And you do not recognise this photo either?
The young woman cedes ground.
The stranger – serious, confident – gathers more and more proof.
Who is right? Who is lying?
Is he a mere seducer? A madman?
Or has he just confused two faces?
What really happened ‘last year’?
You, the viewer, must answer these questions.
Watch carefully:
… an object …
… a gesture …
… a decor …



#000fff (Natural Vision) (IFP)
2017
chroma-key blue, wall painting, #aaafff (existenz)
A/R 1.85





#aaafff (existenz)
2017
acrylic, blackout fabric, unknown object
69 × 61 × 15 cm
Courtesy of the artist



Genkins (Fluo) (3×3)
2017
acrylic, cotton duck
220 × 185 × 15 cm
Courtesy of the artist



A Brief History of Curating
2017
charcoal, Arches paper, cardboard
15 × 21 × 3 cm
Courtesy of the artist



PRESS

Eleonora Castagna, Arthur Fouray’s “2080” at ZQM in Berlin, 2017 — Droste Effect Magazine, Interview, 9 June 2017 — drosteeffectmag.com · PDF

Index

Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks, 2017. Arthur Fouray. Single-channel video with sound · 1 min 43 sec.

A white disc turns against a blue field, and a small green point interrupts it, inside a frame that never moves.

The blue is my wall painting #000fff (Veriscope), painted in chroma-key blue, the colour a studio replaces with another picture; here I filmed it and left it in place. The green point is ç (aaafff (B.A.A.)), a leather-and-screw object of 1 × 1 × 1 cm. The turning disc is Portmanteau Rotary Plate, as my portfolio Arthur Fouray 2015–2017 names it. Inside the video the painting and the objects change scale: the wall becomes a field of colour, the small object a point, the rotary plate a moving disc.

I set the video to Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 – Prelude, written in 1896 after Friedrich Nietzsche’s book; since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), its opening carries the film with it.

Sources: Arthur Fouray, Catalogue, 2017; Arthur Fouray 2015–2017, p. 7.

Further reading: Richard Strauss — orchestral works.

Watch Twin Peaks on YouTube

Frédéric Gabioud Arthur Fouray Baker Wardlaw


Frédéric Gabioud, Arthur Fouray, Baker Wardlaw
Three-person show
Joy de Rouvre
Geneva, Switzerland
12.11–19.11.2016

Special thanks to Pierre Belloni, Joy de Rouvre, Baker Wardlaw, Frédéric Gabioud

Frédéric Gabioud, Arthur Fouray and Baker Wardlaw showed together at Galerie Joy de Rouvre in Geneva from 12 to 19 November 2016. Frédéric and I had founded Silicon Malley, an artist-run space in Prilly, in 2015, with Grégoire Bolay, Julien Fischer and Paul Limoujoux; Baker joined us later. I showed five works. Two come from the #aaafff series: #aaafff (CAR), acrylic and blackout fabric with a Shark truck, and #aaafff (Uber Eats), with kraft paper and Uber Eats bags. The other three are acrylic on cotton duck over an object: Kasimir I on a pillow, C/O ( ))) ))) ) on a bench, with letrAVision, and C/O (Eve Kendall) on a table.



#aaafff (CAR)
2013–2017
acrylic, blackout fabric, Shark truck
16 × 16 × 4 cm
Courtesy of the artist





#aaafff (Uber Eats)
2016
acrylic, blackout fabric, kraft paper, Uber Eats bags, 35 × 45 × 10 cm
Courtesy of the artist



Kasimir I
2016
acrylic, cotton duck, pillow
58 × 58 × 20 cm
Courtesy of the artist



C/O ( ))) ))) )
2016
letrAVision, acrylic, cotton duck, bench
50 × 250 × 40 cm
Courtesy of the artist



C/O (Eve Kendall)
2016 
acrylic, cotton duck, table
118 × 88 × 72 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Index

Arthur Fouray Kiefer Hablitzel Prize




Kiefer Hablitzel Prize
Group show
Swiss Art Awards
Basel, Switzerland
14.06–19.06.2016
Opening 13.06.2016

Photographs by Julien Gremaud

Special thanks to Alfredo Aceto, Alain Fouray, Béatrice Fouray, Léa Fluck, Julien Gremaud, Stéphanie Serra

In 2016 I was nominated for the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize and showed four works at the Swiss Art Awards in Basel. #aaafff (autruche) is an ostrich-feather duster inside a canvas of acrylic and blackout fabric. Kasimir I is acrylic and cotton duck on a pillow; it was shown with #000fff (univision) (Kasimir I), a wall painting from the #000fff series, in which I use the hexadecimal colour #000fff, a pure screen blue. Morel (P.A.S., C.B.S.F.T.) is one of the Morel boxes, made of painting stretchers, where I keep the tests and attempts in my work; the name comes from Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel.





#aaafff (autruche)
2016
acrylic, blackout fabric, duster
85 × 23 × 15 cm
Courtesy of the artist 



#000fff (univision) (Kasimir I)
2016
chroma-key blue, wall painting, Kasimir I
A/R 2



Kasimir I
2016
acrylic, cotton duck, pillow
58 × 58 × 20 cm
Courtesy of the artist





Morel (P.A.S., C.B.S.F.T.)
2016
cotton duck, frames, P.A.S., Carré Blanc Sur Fond Toile
145 × 85 × 12.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist


Index

Arthur Fouray Les Lèvres nues






Les lèvres nues
Group show
DOC!
Paris, France
16.04–30.04.2016
Opening 15.04.2016, 6 pm

Curators
Noémie Vulpian
Jarry (César Chevalier)

Artists
Katinka Bock
César Chevalier
Isabelle Cornaro
Fabien Danesi
Antonin Fassio
Arthur Fouray
Gaillard & Claude
Daiga Grantina
Marcel Mariën
Xavier Mary
Loup Sarion

Quotations selected by Fabien Danesi from the journal Les Lèvres nues, 12 issues, 1954–1958

Special thanks to César Chevalier, Noémie Vulpian, Antonin Fassio, Jeremy Guinoiseau

Press release
Les Lèvres nues, DOC, 2016 — Exhibition leaflet.pdf

Les lèvres nues was a group exhibition at DOC! in Paris, from 16 to 30 April 2016, on a proposal by Noémie Vulpian and Jarry (César Chevalier). It shares its title with the journal Les Lèvres nues (twelve issues, 1954–1958), from which Fabien Danesi selected quotations; the artists included Katinka Bock, Isabelle Cornaro and Marcel Mariën. I showed two works. Lauren (#aaafff), acrylic and cotton duck on a bed base, was placed between César Chevalier’s Exotica (1984) and Isabelle Cornaro’s Reproductions (variantes); Rrose (DOC) is acrylic and jute fabric on a pillow. That year I joined DOC! as one of its curators.



Lauren (#aaafff)
2016
acrylic, cotton duck, bed base
135 × 190 × 20 cm
Courtesy of the artist



Rrose (DOC)
2016
acrylic, jute fabric, pillow, 60 × 45 × 20 cm
Private collection 


Index

Arthur Fouray Accrochage Vaud




Accrochage Vaud
Group show
MCBA
Lausanne, Switzerland
22.01–06.03.2016

Special thanks to Anaïs Defago, Damián Navarro, Frédéric Gabioud, Jacques Duboux

Accrochage Vaud was a group exhibition at the MCBA in Lausanne, from 22 January to 6 March 2016. I showed two paintings from that year side by side, MC (Baby blue) and FG (Océan), both in acrylic and cotton duck on a ladder, 40 cm wide and 240 or 200 cm high. I had already used a ladder in MC (Taupe), a piece from 2014 shown at BOOM in 2015.



MC (Baby blue)
2016
acrylic, cotton duck, ladder
40 × 240 × 6 cm
Courtesy of the artist



FG (Océan)
2016
acrylic, cotton duck, ladder
40 × 200 × 6 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Index