NOèLLE PUJOL ÔMarwebÕ

17 January  15 March 2003

Opening Thursday 16

January from 6 to 9pm

 

de Wavrin experiments Paris Ludovic de Wavrin gallery project space

 

In response to Martin ParrÕs ÔPhone ProjectÕ photographic series shown in the main gallery, No‘lle Pujol presents ÔMarwebÕ, an installation of three monitors, a video projection and photographs in the project space.

Started in Marocco in 2001, Marweb takes its title from a web search engine dedicated to the Maghreb. The work makes visible contradictions that are specific to economic exchanges in the contemporary world. At different levels, each work in the exhibition compares the persistency of a local tradition marked with human hands to the signs of a global economy ruled by mass technology.

 

On one of the three monitors, camels feed themselves in mangers made of recycled Shell and Fina barrels. They are symbols of nomadism yet attached to a territory. The two other videos capture parallel activities, which apparently escape direct economic management of space but nevertheless part of networks: on one of them, teenagers have turned electricity poles into a playing zone ; in the other video, a man is making enigmatic body movements on the background of a mosque and electrical wires.

 

On the video projection, human presence is reduced to a stump guided by a computer mouse in a local Internet cafŽ. Behind the window, labelled with the ÔWindowsÕ sign, the local community continues its usual activities.

 

The two photographs shown in the exhibition belong to a series of six digital images made from rushes that the artist decide to keep apart from her editing. Shown together and in similar tones, the two images seem to come from the same environment. They actually draw a crossed relationship between industrial landscape and human body. Whereas one of them is a large view of the desert punctuated with water tanks, the other one is a close-up of a body shape behind a dune.

 

The ÔMarwebÕ project is being shown for the first time in Paris.

Resulting from a long editing process that ended in December 2002, it was conceived in Marocco in March 2001 in the context of a workshop organised by Le Pavillon programme of the Palais de Tokyo. Starting from the framework of this collective trip, No‘lle Pujol rejected the position of the tourist-artist in search of exotic images. She observed and juxtaposed details and gestures revealing the links between human body and networks, cultural identities and exotic clichŽs, mobility and economic borders.

 

The editing process of ÔMarwebÕ can define No‘lle PujolÕs wider work, from her video interviews with a baby-foot competitor (Baby-F, 1999) to the views of caravans and rubbish around Apple City in Cork (Apple Factory, 2001). Reducing her tools to static shots and short sequences and flirting with the documentary genre , No‘lle Pujol proposes indications of a story in which the most readable symbols of economic activities verge on an open representation of the body and its identities.

 

No‘lle Pujol was born in 1972 in Saint-Girons (France) and is based in ˆ Paris. Currently researcher at Le Fresnoy school in Tourcoing (France), she had her degree from the Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2000. No‘lle PujolÕs work was shown in group shows Propos Mobiles (1998) in Paris, ZAC99 (1999) at the ARC-MusŽe dÕart moderne de la ville in Paris and Touching from a distance-Germinations 13 (2002) at the Crawford gallery in Cork, Ireland. She often did collaborative work with the artist Ludovic Burel, for the exhibitions Under_deconstruction (2002) at the Frac Paca in Marseille and Le travail cÕest la santŽ (2000) at the Zoo galerie in Nantes. Her videos were also shown in festivals such as La Saison vidŽo in Roubaix (2001), K dÕŽcoles- Point, ligne, plan at the FŽmis cinema school (2000) and Accs(s)-Festival des cultures Žlectroniques in Pau (2000).

 

Thank you : Bernard Barre, Ludovic Burel, Nicolas Chardon, Natacha Kantor.

 

The Ludovic de Wavrin Gallery opened on 8th November 2002 with Maki Kawakita and Philippe Terrier-Hermann. Throughout the year, it presents a two-fold programme of exhibitions. In the main display room, exhibitions of contemporary photography by several international artists. In the project room de Wavrin experiments, a guest curator propose a series of exhibitions of young artists working in France, which are linked to the galleryÕs main exhibition.

Guest curator for 2002-2003 : Marianne Lanavre.

 

GALERIE LUDOVIC DE WAVRIN 22 bis passage Dauphine 75006 Paris - France

Tel  00 33 (0)1 43 25 49 97 Fax 00 33 (0)1 43 25 49 58

ludovic-dewavrin@wanadoo.fr http://www.ludovicdewavrin.com

Tue-Sat from 11.30am and by appointment