Galerie Derouillon is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Vincent Lorgé in Paris.
Vincent Lorgé has made wit a driving force in his work. "Bonne résolution" is a testament to this creative approach: everywhere, shifts in meaning create incongruous associations, inviting the viewer's mind to unearth here and there the pun where it might nestle. The stirrup is tightened with the mischievous neon lights of ŒUVRE D'ART/VEUT ADORER. To appreciate this immersive exhibition, saturated with familiar symbols, vernacular objects and makeshift talismans, you have to leave all seriousness at the door.
Vincent Lorgé's creative principle, which records the discreet escapes of reason into facetiousness, is akin, in a sense, to a renewed sensitivity to the infra-thin. Thus the cursor - a discreet, everyday symbol that others would call an arrow or pointer - which in Vincent Lorgé's work becomes the unwelcome gnat pointing at the volatile and the infinitesimal. Endemic to the exhibition, here it is captured directly on the ceiling in the SPIRALE installation, made of sticky paper for flying pests, there capturing the pictorial space in the hollow of its form, which has become a frame for expression. At a time when France has adopted the right to disconnect as a good resolution, we can't help but roll our eyes at our own erratic, voluntary virtual journeys.
After all, we want to: at first glance, the photograph entitled La discrète suggests a willing invasion of life ("the real thing") by these symbols strewn across our real skins. But there's no clear dichotomy between WWW and IRL* in Vincent Lorgé's work. The arrows are flies, of course, but they're also the kind worn by gallants at the king's court to enhance their distinguished pallor. To be digital is perhaps also to be desirable, and we have to come to terms with this mixture of genres and degrees of reality, admitting that we also dress ourselves in immateriality. In Vincent Lorgé's work, the human being seems clownish in the way he presents himself to others, in the filters he uses to embellish his own image, and in his determination to capture and disseminate every facet of it, right down to the most intimate parts of the anatomy.
What then remains of Eros? Modern Gradiva, these feminine casts evoke Wilhelm Jensen's novel depicting the confusion of an archaeologist who confusingly lends a stone bas-relief the charm of flesh. With these CAIRNS strewn across the gallery floor, Vincent Lorgé has applied to the letter our indiscreet vow of all-seeing, borrowing from Pliny's Natural History the ambition of all-knowing. As an archaeologist of the present day, the artist has attempted to capture the fleeting, snide visions of the hypermodern individual: in this case, right in the living.
The distinction between real and virtual, past and present, is full of porosity in Vincent Lorgé's work. Here, memory is not a burden: it is what reactivates our understanding of the present, like the rather uneven cobblestones of Le Temps retrouvé. Such is the case with TwingoWindow, which is as much a trompe-l'œil of matter, a faux-true ready-made, as it is a workshop for lived experience. This vehicle window is one of those through which the eye has recorded the succession of landscapes travelled through, before finally reaching the final destination, that of this makeshift vacation. Art and life mingle ardently in the work of one who, refusing to wait too long in the classroom, one day made Robert Filliou's bon mot the essence of his work.
Vincent Lorgé was born in Paris in 1987. He lives and works between Lyon and Paris. He trained at the École supérieure d'art de Grenoble. "Bonne résolution" is his first solo show at Galerie Derouillon.
