COCKTAIL ELECTRO

ALAIN BIET

Opening on Friday, October 26, 2018 at 6PM
EXHIBITION from Saturday October 27, 2018, to Saturday January 12, 2019.
La Station thanks GIRELLE PRODUCTIONS

Since 2004, Alain BIET has been methodically drawing all the object that enter his place and thus, composes the series Grands Canons: always expanding, today it counts 6000 drawings.
The exhibition Cocktail Electro counts approximately 1300 drawings falling into several families of objects using electricity, (batteries, light bulbs, radios, remote controls, cameras, drillers…), themselves divided into five parts (sources, light, sound, image, machine).
The objects are all represented through a technique close to the documentary study: a full-scale observation drawing, on Arches 300gr watercolor paper. The object is presented with a front view according to a conic perspective with only one vanishing point, chosen because it gives the maximum of information.
On the same model as those of the 19th century naturalists, the drawing is made in colors, with watercolor (not allowing any pentimenti) used in various strata over-imposed with the complementary color to create shadows, materials and contours. This type of drawing, claimed to be objective, wants to be without any intension other than a simple meticulous description and an account of the effects of transparency and material.
At La Station, these familiar objects are presented under the form of an inventory in an attempt to classify: branches and networks create a genealogical tree, or a chain of evolution between their different mutations: the Walkman turns into a CD player to become an mp3 player, the designs become more refined, the sizes are reduced…
Thus, this exhibition takes the form of a list, paced by the long time to draw, and sets for a moment the obsolescent profusion of these objects that are transformed too fast for us to really be able to assimilate them.
A part of these objects are visible in the film Grands Canons directed by Alain Biet in 2018 (Girelle Productions), also shown in the exhibition Cocktail Electro.

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ALAIN BIET

Born in 1959

Lives and works in Blois

http://alainbiet.fr

Alain Biet graduated from the Beaux-Arts of Orléans in 1982.
A professor at the Beaux-Arts of Orléans from 1985 to 1990, he now teaches at the Beaux-Arts of Blois.
 He is a member of various collectives including Oulan Bator in Orléans and intervenes at La Fondation du Doute in Blois. He takes part and organizes multiple contemporary art events and exhibitions in France, Italy and Belgium.
A multidisciplinary artist, Alain Biet is in turn, a sculptor, a drawer, a director, a performance artist, an installation artist… He created many series including Migrations, Tripodes, Hublots, Sténopodes, Charnières, Interminette, the V.I., (Indefinite Visuals) and Canons.
Through large productions of « objects, » he is interested in the notion of proliferation, mutation and classification. He questions the relations between the point of view and time, between the living and the artificial, between nature and culture.
In the exhibition Cocktail Electro, he is particularly interested in the following question: « are the objects produced by man also productions of nature? »

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GRANDS CANONS – THE FILM
2018 / 10 min. 44 sec. / Color
DIRECTOR: Alain Biet / IMAGE: Sara Sponga, Lucas Dal Cortivo, Alain Morizot / SOUND: Pablo Pico, Yan Volsy / EDITING: Ludovic Vieuille / PRODUCTION: Girelle Production

On a drawing sheet of paper, a brush conjures up watercolors. A daily life object is precisely drawn by the hands of an artist. Then two drawings, then three, four… superimposed, condensed, multiplied, hundreds of drawings of mobile objects succeed each other on the screen.
Grands Canons is an animated short film based on a series of observation drawings which, in the image of entomologists and naturalists works of the 19th century, listing systematically all the daily life objects that « enter the house. »
By opening the film on a scene in which we can see Alain Biet draw, a certain connection with time settles, that of observation, of this drawing seemingly simple but complex nonetheless in its technicality. Then the pace takes up and the film has the viewer experience a zapping experiment. Here the artist plays with two contrary notions, the inventory and the infinite: how to appease an impulsive observation gesture when our world seems to still and always fill with objects?
On the verge of readability, the drawings succeed each other at the rhythm of 24 images per second, making them barely perceptible. This scrolling gives the illusion of the continuity of a movement in which each drawing becomes a visual and sensorial information. The objects, in the way of living organisms or cells, undergo several transformations: division, multiplications, splits, proliferations, mutations, evolutions…
The movement is here the response to the shock the artist feels in front of the immense number of objects he shows; the free flow of the animation transforms and gives them a certain lightness back.

AWARDS

2018

- Award for the Best Animated Film, festival Music & Cinéma, Aubagne

- Award for the Best Film, gallery category, festival Anima Mundi, Rio, Brazil

- Award for the Best Short Film Music, festival des notes et des toiles, Pont à Mousson

- Special Mention, festival Partie de Campagne, Ouroux

- Award for the Best Documentary, festival Carton, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Pictures of the exhibition