In 2014, the French-Luxembourgish duet had presented at the gallery an installation named « A Perfect World », about the modernist and utopic architecture of the 50’s-70’s, and more precisely about the social housing of that time : the « Housing schemes ». The monumental molds made out of resin represent those emblematic buildings, as well as the series of drawings called « Last Breaths », which reflect the end of an utopia. In this new exhibition called « A Hundred Hours from Home », the artists take a step back from architecture and focus this time on everyday life objects, but their aim remains the same. They show the romantic vestige of a modernity that failed. They tell us about the unavoidable decline of all things.
The central piece of the exhibition, « At Dawn », made of polyester and fiberglass, consists in piling up broken objects : a car, a TV set, and a transistor. A certain nostalgia spreads out from their work, for instance in the piece called « Moonlight solitude », which is an accumulation of audiovisual materials (TVs, speakers, transistors, amplifiers), faithfull companions of musical and TV programmes discoveries, symbol of the leisure society, that have largely contributed to the democratization of cultural goods.
Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil transport us in a universe that is as obsolete as « retro-futurist », and manage to sublime this civilization and its unsteady ideology.
Galerie Valérie Bach (press release)
