Exhibitions2014Vestige

For its thirteenth exhibition, Frances Foundation invited artist Gavin Turk to engage in dialogue with works from the collection. Through painting and sculpture, Gavin Turk recycle the work of his predecessors, icons of modern art. He plays with the history of art, revisits its codes, questions the myth of the artist and, more broadly, the way of life in our society.

Gavin Turk puts the subject at the heart of his research, whether it is a work of Pop Art or a trash bag. By making cups or sleeping bags painted bronze, Turk ruffles the concepts of value and waste, positioning himself as a witness to culture, to an era, a trace left by man.

This exhibition raised questions about the place we leave these residues of humanity, whether material or human. Residues from the history of art or our contemporary lives, who find themselves recycled, transformed and reinvented by contemporary artists.

The exhibition referred to the documentary by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, Waste Land (2011), set in Jardim Gramacho, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro and one of the largest landfills in the world. The artist makes the "catadores" (waste sorters) the heroes of famous paintings such as The Death of Marat by Jacques Louis David (1794), in scenes composed from objects and materials from the dump.

The recycling of these remnants of humanity brings value to what no longer has any, brings to the forefront men and objects that we ignore and gives meaning to what is excluded. These contemporary works deal with the abandonment of a man or an object, the abandonment of oneself.

The dialogue engages with works from the collection, such as Roger Ballen, Guillaume Bresson, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Subodh Gupta, Sophie Kuijken, Jean Revillard and Florian Süssmayr.