EXPOS

PASCAL LE COQ

Works Presentation Artists Press Download

The Lara Vincy gallery is putting on the third solo exhibition of Pascal Le  Coq’s works after those held in 2004 and 2007.

Art objects are never really finalized. From their conception until their showing, from their showing until their possible entrance into art history, how many transformations, how many metamorphoses !

Even after their material destruction, they can remain in peoples’ memories and become mythical. Even within their purely conceptual state, they can overwhelm the world.

This observation led Pascal Le Coq, fifteen years ago, to create the publication OXO. Apart from its ecosystem that enabled it to survive over a long period of time (the review’s format was determined by the budget coming in from the subscribers), the whole of its editorial content symbolically referred to the countless changes which the initial project encountered, issue after issue.

Originally a simple printed publication, OXO became a genuine encyclopedia containing nearly a thousand articles, by dint of accumulation. Some of them remained simple definitions that each reader can set in motion by exercising his imagination (we saw some recently in the Art Press calendar).

Others were displayed on the Web or were transmuted into material art objects.

The word  “transmutation” is employed to underline the radical change in status and the entrance into the art market. The encyclopedic review OXO, far from remaining within its own specific space, was in fact displayed in other instances to gain benefits it would not gain intrinsically : the printed publication has the freedom and length of life, the Web provides the immediacy and the flow, the market leads to prestige and power). Despite all that, all these objects remain undeniably linked to the publication’s history, which is pointed up on each of them by a characteristic monogram and a descriptive frieze traced in MUTTUM fonts.

The transmuted objects this year were chosen for their ability to illustrate the theme of metamorphosis, as well as for their visual  impact taken from the advertising world. With the series of sculptures “Testosterone”, a parallel is established between the  transformation of OXO and that of a transsexual FTM who would totally accept his condition  (FTM meaning “Female To Male” as well as “Fabulous Trade Mark”), like a publication would uphold its status as a work of art , in the same way as a sculpture or a painting.

Other icons taken from the marketing world are here desacralised (like the egg Kinder Surprise transformed into “Gender Surprise” or the Goodyear tire enlivened with erect sexual organs and “pneumatic” breasts), before being – perhaps –resacralised by the art world.

Alongside, objects entitled “Work in progress” (Lübeck’s cones and painted canvases) are characterized by three colored stripes, the color of one being a mixture of the colors of the other two, sign of an in-between, of an operation, a progressive or radical change-over, of a passage from one state to another. This means: we are at work here, something is happening !

Another emblematic of this constant work in progress: the sculpture “Sequel”, reproduction of an arrangement set up by Daniel Cordier in the Abattoirs de Toulouse, with two “sculptures” by Pascal Le Coq, that he had previously acquired in the Lara Vincy gallery and which he provided with a new meaning.  Here we find the two objects, a  “Miss Erotica” on a base and a hanging  “Punching Ball”, balloons turned inside out like socks with their insides in opposite erection, one coming from above and the other leaving from below, bringing to mind the co-existence of the spiritual world and of the material world.

A sculpture entitled “ Espèces d’ ” sums up the exhibition. It is not meant to be an insult but rather an encounter between Marcel Duchamp’s “ Tu m’ ” (an inventory of his earlier works) and “ Espèces d’espaces ” by Georges Perec (an inventory of the spaces we go through), two mythological ancestors who had a major influence on OXO. Painted on a base surmounted by a “Miss Erotica”, a sketch describes the four  EEEE spaces in which OXO continued its development : Esprit Ecrit Ecran Expo (Spirit, Printing, Screen, Show). The adventure goes on !

A catalogue published by the gallery and designed by Pascal Le Coq is published to coincide with this exhibition.

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“Pascal Le Coq’s approach takes its source in his OXO project of an encyclopedic magazine:  the publication appears like a core from which spring forth numerous proposals, capable of being embodied in the shape of tridimensional undertakings, as well as multiplying on the numerical pages of a blog, before re-integrating their first space, simultaneously tangible and virtual.”

Marie Boivent, “Revues d’artistes : une introduction”, Revue 2-0-1

www.revue-2-0-1.net/index.php?/revuesdartistes/revues-dartistes/

 

“What I write was perhaps not true yesterday and may be false tomorrow, but today I believe in it”.

By Pascal Le Coq

(in 2.0.1 Revue de recherche sur l’art du XIXe au XXIe siècle - Dossier

hors série « Revues d’artistes » - February 2010 - Extraits)

“OXO is an experimental review. In that sense it does not merely follow a pre-established program but makes use of every new event in order to develop and transmute. It is in a way an organism in perpetual mutation. Like all living organisms,  OXO is primarily characterized by its survival instinct. Having earlier created several publications that came to a premature end through lack of means, I imagined, fifteen years ago, a system that guarantees its long term development : the « variability principle ».

« A system invented to ensure the economic survival of an artistic project and to protect it from the commercial and financial restraints, inbuilt in the art market. The project : the experimental review OXO.

The system : the OXO format (pages, manufacturing method and distribution) automatically adapts itself to the budget made up of the ongoing subscriptions.

Zero subscriber : definitive end of OXO. From 1 to 5 : issue of OXO in 5 manuscript copies (1 page). From 6 to 10 : issue of OXO in 10 painted copies (2 pages). From  11 to 25 : issue of OXO in  25 copies, numerical printing (4 pages). From  26 to 50 : issue of OXO in 50 copies, printed in  offset monochrome (8 pages) + 2 bonus. From 51 to 100 : issue of OXO in 100 copies, monochrome offset printing (16 pages) + 1 bonus. From 101 to 250 : issue of OXO in 250 copies, monochrome offset printing (32 pages). From 251 to 500 : issue of OXO in 500 copies, bichrome offset printing (64 pages). From 501 to 1000 : issue of OXO in 1000 copies, trichrome offset printing (128 pages). From 1001 to 5000 : issue of OXO in 5000 copies, quadrichrome offset printing (256 pages). From 5001 to 10000 : issue of OXO in 10000 copies, pentachrome offset printing  (512 pages). Over 10000 subscribers : issue based on the number of subscribers, hexachrome offset printing (1024 pages). »

Fifteen years later OXO still exists and one must note that its layout, even if it is still  similar to the initial definitions, has taken some liberties sometimes dictated by very  restrictive restraints. Indeed, the question regarding the editorial content of the review has since the very start posed a certain number of questions : how to generate this editorial content ? What kind of content ? An exhaustive or an infinite content ? Etc.

The result of these queries is that today the OXO publication is growing within its own space , that of the printed page, but also beyond its own space, i.e. in the a tridimensional space and on the Web, each space having its own qualities and its specific functions. For the printed publication the official, contractual, ancestral characteristics. For the three-dimensional space, the commercial and spectacular characteristics.  For the virtual space immediacy and flexibility.(...)

(...) After working at first  « in the old fashioned way  », awaiting  an inspiration bestowed by a hypothetical muse, I remembered the highly efficient techniques set up by the “Ouvroir” of potential literature (OuLiPo) at the start of the sixties. It was enough to combine those mathematical principles with the current technologies (Google

Image, Wikipedia, Anagram Generator) to come across, by an association of ideas, large areas of creation where I will only here mention a few examples, among the half a thousand editorial contents published over fifteen years by  OXO. - Miss Erotica (...), Lubies (...), Filles de Léonard (...), Dépressions (...), Muttum (...), Démarques (...), Icônes transgenres (...), etc.” (...)

Translated in English by Ann Cremin

 

Individual exhibitions :

2008 /// OXO, Cabinet du livre d’artiste, Rennes/F

2007 /// Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris/F

2007 /// C’est mon choix, My Loft, Bourgoin-Jallieu/F

2004 /// Transmutations, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris/F

2002 /// Une collection particulière, Ville de Bourgoin-Jallieu/F

2001 /// Reliefs OXO, Salon Ptolémée, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris/F

1998 /// Inventaire, Galerie RE/Pierre Staudenmeyer, Paris/F