John Armleder

Résumé du livre

Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1880), a French doctor and naturalist, invented anatomical (and botanical) papier-mâché models that were widely distributed in the 19th and 20th centuries. John Armleder: Out! (Out!) presents a series of works by Swiss performance artist, painter, sculptor and critic John Armleder (born 1948) based on these models, which he acquired partly by accident, and somewhat mischievously. In a conversation between Mai-Thu Perret and the artist included in this volume, we come to understand that it is not so much the educational or iconographical dimension of these objects that Armleder wished to reproduce, but rather the cascade of references to questions, technical as much as abstract or material, and also linked to figuration. Armleder's own work with the models addresses questions of reproduction, displacement and meaning, always in their multiple shifts, contradictions and bifurcations.