Attempted exhaustion
This piece is the result of work done in summer 2014. After choosing a sample from a score of Zus in Seine-Saint-Denis where operations were being carried out by the National Urban Renovation Agency, Fougeirol drew up a map. Represented as black dots on the same scale, these zones could be read as blind spots in the eye, where the visual nerve takes the place of the photoreceptive rods.
The contours of these zones are determined by streets or parcels. Fougeirol has given form to their exhaustive toponymic nomenclature. Juxtaposed, ordered, these names adumbrate a strange Lettriste poem with associations that are at once banal, arbitrary and singular.
Fougeirol has systematically explored these physical limits and produced images, following a strict protocol: digital camera with an uncentred “architectural” lens placed at eye-height on the tripod, so as to be as close as possible to ordinary perception, with an horizontal format, so as to be as objective as possible, free of bias. The continuous projection of this collection of documentary photographs in black-and-white, taken on the front lines between city and city, between “zone” and suburb, between what is considered sensitive and what is not, this film of a reality that is at once banal and provisional is both a document and an artwork.
The document shows the contemporary banality of public spaces, thoughtlessly laid out, unthinkingly “stuck together” and designed essentially for mechanical traffic. Marked by signs that are empty of meaning, they are unthought spaces inhospitable to any kind of city life.
This work probes the gap between the real and its representations, which hardly reflect those of the various players in urban development, foremost among them the architects.
Jean-Paul Robert
Tentative d’épuisement
II
8 items to paste 56,5x80cm digital printing on poster paper total size 160x226cm / edition 5ex+2ap
Tentative d’épuisement
III
Diaporama /slide show 328 photographs 27’20 variable size / edition 5ex+2ap
Tentative d’épuisement
I
transfer printing 68x96cm / edition 5ex+2ap
In Benoît Fougeirol’s photographs, in the midst of the abandonment, something imposes itself, becomes alive, despite the emptiness… “Landscapes of ruins, or ruins of landscape” to borrow Jean-Paul Robert’s poetic term, Benoit Fougeirol’s photographic works raise the question of the boundaries between architecture and nature, civilization and abandonment, myth and reality. Desolate, abandoned architectures, yet with a vibrant presence. A lot of wild vegetation too, thriving and exploding everywhere, freely. Without the slightest theatricality, and with great sobriety and mastery, Benoît Fougeirol lets us glimpse the possibilit y of a new living order of things, even, and perhaps especially, of the most forgotten things. Born in 1962, photographer and artist Benoît Fougeirol lives and works in and around Paris. For some years now he has been exploring the uncertain zones of the city limits, collecting images. At once topographic and poetic, his approach captures the unsuspected, silent wealth of this space where greenery meets asphalt. The results can be seen in the book AUTOUR / AROUND (éditions vmcf, 2010). Since then, he has concentrated on the so-called “sensitive” areas of the city. He has under taken a methodical inventory of these territories whose reality exceeds or belies the simple clichés pasted over it. His works are part of numerous private and public collections, including the Musée Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain; the New York Public Library, USA; Musée Carnavalet in Paris, France and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.