AR(T)CHÉOLOGIE: LÉO FOURDRINIER, ARNAUD KALOS, GABRIEL LEGER, NAZANIN POUYANDEH, TRÚC-ANH, DUNE VARELA

Archaeology aims to study human past through research, observation and the analysis of material traces and artifacts by following objective criteria. Since the 18th century, excavations at the site of Pompeii and the early days of Romanticism, a dialogue has developed between art and this emerging scientific discipline.

In the 20th century, visual artists from Arte Povera, from Land Art, Daniel Spoerri, Anne and Patrick Poirier or, more recently, Mark Dion dedicated their work to it. The environment and the anthropocene have inspired a renewed archaeology. Art and archaeology both place their interest in humankind, in their relationship with time and mortality, their beliefs and questions of identity.

The principle of archaeological research and methodology can also be applied to certain artistic approaches. In archaeology, knowledge produced from past societies and based on buried and previously concealed material traces aims to make the invisible visible. This is also what the artist does, by creating the work and bringing his thought and his plastic sensibility to life. 

Above all, archaeology is a tremendous source of imagination and inspiration for the artist, and even of fantasized projection. The paintings of Trúc-Anh and Nazanin Pouyandeh presented in the exhibition evoke Prehistory for one, Egypt for the other, to create a narrative infused with poetry and mystery. 

The process of making ancient and contemporary temporalities meet through a revised photographic approach, all of which transferred onto a stone plate, is at the heart of Dune Varela’s approach. Thus, “playing on the intertwining of times and eras, Dune Varela treats the image like a ruin, a relic, caught up in the flow of a speculative archaeology”. 

Arnaud Kalos’ work is rooted in his passion for archaeology, geology and prehistory. As a child, he discovered, buried in the earth, a treasure trove of Roman coins. This striking and fortuitous encounter determined his entire artistic approach.

Gabriel  Leger  and  Léo Fourdrinier both deal with time as their artistic medium and subject. Often restoring  abandoned archaeological objects to their original  function, Gabriel Leger places the old artifact in a contemporary temporality. For Léo Fourdrinier, whose notions of archaeology, heritage and transmission are at the heart of his preoccupations, casts and replicas have become a working method. The artist takes antique sculptures and enhances them with contemporary elements, creating chimeric objects that lie somewhere between the historical past and the anticipated future. 

Archaeology and  contemporary art share a common        interest in the question of time and memory. The archaeological object that emerges from the Earth is recontextualized by the historian in order to write a narrative about origins and identity. In the same way, the artist’s message sheds light on the object. At the heart of this perspective lies the profound emotion linked to the vertigo of time, a feeling of immanence and fragility, the fruit of the encounter between the past and our present time.