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Mark Geffriaud

Biography and bibliography

Mark Geffriaud Born in 1977 in Vitry sur Seine. Lives and works in Paris.

Solo exhibitions

2010

et Mason, EMBA, Galerie Manet, Gennevilliers

et Dixon, Zoo Galerie, Nantes

2009

Robert Breer & Mark Geffriaud, Art Premiere, gb agency, Art 40 Basel

Si l'on pouvait être un Peau-Rouge, gb agency, Paris

2008

Polka Dot, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, cur. Daria de Beauvais

Group exhibitions

2010

The Crystal Hypothesis, GAMeC, Bergamo, Italie (cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel) (upcoming)

Alchemy Box, Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne, (upcoming)

Che Cosa Sono Le Nuvole, Museion - Museum of modern and contemporary art, Bolzano

Double Bind / Arrêtez d'essayer de me comprendre, Villa Arson, Nice, (cur. Eric Mangion, Dean Inkster, Sébastien Pluot)

cf, Galerie Art & Essai, Rennes, (cur. François Aubart)

2009

The Object of the attack Part II, David Roberts Foundation, London

Three by 3, FormContent, London

Hypno Show, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, cur. Raimundas Malasauskas

Là où les eaux se mêlent, chapitre 3, gb agency, Paris

L’image cabrée, 11e Prix Ricard, Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris

Antidote 5, Galerie des Galeries, Paris

Nord, Nord-Ouest, gb agency, Paris

Clifford Irving show, Ciné13, Paris, cur. Raimundas Malasauskas

Deux fois la même ville, Nevers, cur. Géraldine Longueville

The Happy Interval, Tulips and Roses, Vilnius

Au pied de la lettre, Domaine de Chamarande, Chamarande

Nous tournons en rond dans la nuit..., Musée Départemental, Chateau de Rochechouart, Rochechouart

Paris/Berlin, gb agency at Croy Nielsen, Berlin

Paper Exhibition, Artists Space, New York, cur. Raimundas Malasauskas

2008

Notorious, Frac Île-de-France, le Plateau, Paris, cur. Xavier Franceschi

Les Feuilles, Super et Palais de Tokyo, Paris, cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel

Crisi. Contra les aparences, angels, Barcelona

Le Spectrarium, Pavillon Suisse, Cité Internationale, Paris, cur. Samuel Dubosson, Mélodie Mousset & Tatiana Rihs

Effondrement de l’onde de probabilité (Stretch & Narrow), Zoo Gallery, Nantes, cur. Patrice Joly & Aude Launay

Palimpseste, galerie Xippas, Paris

L'anomalie d'Ararat, IrmaVepLab, Châtillon sur Marne, cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel

Ce qui revient, galerie ACDC, Brest, cur. François Aubard

Faces, gb agency, Paris

La Marge d'Erreur, Centre d'art la Synagogue de Delme, cur. Le Bureau

220 jours, gb agency, Paris, cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel:

186 000 fins par seconde

Katamari

...excepté peut-être une constellation

2007

Le Jardin de Cyrus, EMBA Manet, Gennevilliers, cur. Yoann Gourmel

Speed Dating 2, Zoo Galerie, Nantes, cur. Patrice Joly & Aude Launay

Crosswords, Analix Forever, Genève, cur. Michele Robecchi

220 jours, gb agency, Paris, cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel:

Rien n'aura eu lieu que le lieu...

All we ever see of stars are their old photographs

Prologue

00's, Lyon contemporary art biennial, Lyon, cur. Pierre Joseph

The Tent Show, Centre d'art contemporain Nikolaj, Copenhagen

The Man who shot Liberty Valance, La Galerie Extérieure, tour in the USA, artist and curator in collaboration with Géraldine Longueville

2006

Please Wait, Immanence, Paris

Nuit Blanche 06, Paris, cur. Géraldine Longueville

...with bizarre rooms in whimsical shapes (the Library), cur. Elodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel, gb agency at Villa Warsaw, Warsaw

La Galerie Extérieure n°3, Paris, cur. Géraldine Longueville

Gemütlich-kite, Münzstrasse 10, Berlin

Le Spectre des Armatures, Glassbox, Paris, cur. Elodie Royer, Mathilde Villeneuve & Yoann Gourmel

2005

Sans Titre, Galerie Vasistas, Montpellier

Autant de Mathématiques que de Petites Filles, Galerie Aperto, Montpellier, cur. Patrick Perry

Is/Sud, Galerie ESCA, Nîmes

2004

Royal Wedding, MAMCO, Genève, cur. Ecole du Magasin

2002

L'École Temporaire, in Import/Export, Villa-Arson, Nice, cur. Pierre Joseph

Publications

2009

Mousse Magazine, #18, interview with Francesca di Nardo, April - May.

Artforum, review by Joanna Fiduccia, April.

Semaine, review by Karen Tanguy, March- May.

Flash Art International, review by Chris Sharp, March - April.

Particules, #23, Centrales Périphéries, interview with Stéphane Corréard, February - March.

Exit Express, #41, Mark Geffriaud, review by Guillaume Désanges, February.

Artforum.com, Critics’ Picks, review by Emily Verla Bovino, February.

Le Journal des arts, #296, Multiplier les points de vue, interview with Frédéric Bonnet, February 6 - 21.

Les Inrockuptibles, #688, review by Judicaël Lavrador, February 3 - 9.

Les Inrockuptibles, #687, Artiste mille feuilles, by Judicaël Lavrador, January 27 - February 2.

Le Journal des arts, #295, Faire son cinéma, by Frédéric Bonnet, January 23 - February 5.

2008

Artecontexto, #19, L’Anomalie d’Ararat, by Catalina Lozano, Automn.

Zérodeux, #47, Drôles de médiums, by Mathilde Villeneuve, Automn.

Art 21, # 17, Tout le reste, by Yoann Gourmel and Portfolio by the artist, May - June.

Art 21, # 17, 220 jours, by Rémi Parcollet, May - June.

Les Inrockuptibles, #643, 220 jours de fête, by Judicaël Lavrador, March 25 - 31.

Flash Art, # 258, by Joanna Fiduccia, January - February.

2007

00's, L'histoire d'une décennie qui n'est encore nommée, Lyon Biennial, catalogue, Les Presses du Réel, Dijon.

Works

Syzygy

Lance

et MAson et Dixon

Anti Dumpty

Wooden falls were collected in various workshops of several corporate associations, architects, cabinet makers, joiners, then were assembled on the ground so as to recompose a geometrical shape.

Anti Dumpty

The pieces of a hoarse vase were restuck, composing a new shape, half a sphere. It is arranged quoted of two grooved panels on which the ordered letterings write both words Anti Dumpty.

'Good Heavens', he said to himself...

Herbarium

Untitled

Untitled

La Fourmi de Langton

Correspondances

Untitled

A River Twice

If one were only an Indian / cross dissolve

If one were only an Indian / for Susan

If one were only an Indian / for Henri

If one were only an Indian / looking forward

If one were only an Indian / table d'orientation

Nord Nord-Ouest

Sculptures inside a sculpture, bits and pieces of a rubber are inserted into a piece of Plexiglas which takes the shape of a pile of sheets of paper.

Sculptures inside a sculpture, bits and pieces of a rubber are inserted into a piece of Plexiglas which takes the shape of a pile of sheets of paper.

Untitled

Polka Dot

The projection of the first photograph of the sun scans the room back and forth, lighting up stock footages from various origins like a theatre spotlight. The focus is made on the back wall, allowing the picture to be seen for itself for a brief moment. At the end of each rotation, the light remains for a while during which it is reflected by a mirror onto the center pages of a book standing upright on a shelf. Tiny holes in the pages let the light go through the other side, engaging the photos in a back to back conversation.

Mires

Herbarium

The light of slide projectors (moving according to the slide shows) goes through the holes in the wall behind the framed pages revealing different parts of the images on the other side.

Roche

Blue, red and orange monochromes are projected onto a copy of Compact — polyphonic novel written by Maurice Roche in which every voice is associated with a specific color — intensifying or erasing different parts of the text.

Les Renseignements Généraux

"Les Renseignements généraux" (named after the French secret service, literally meaning "global information") is a book never intended to be either finished or published and which can take many forms. Its existence is only revealed through a series of photos which give a glimpse of its content : combinations of illustrations meant to back up an absent text. The more or less loose associations provide the raw material as well as the illustrations of the book I would dream of reading one day if ever someone was willing to write it for me.

Alpabeth

The letters of all the alphabets in use on earth today were mixed up together and reclassified according to their shape, in this way designing an evolving wallpaper pattern.

Mercator-sur-mer (les frasques du patatoïde)

A new version of the terrestrial planisphere was created by unfolding a paper ball on which the drawing of the continents and oceans had been previously transferred.

Present Perfect

The lights hitting the naked walls anticipate the next exhibition, pointing out the future location of the works to come. The light flickers as fast as a wink of an eye every 15 to 50 seconds (which corresponds to the perception of the immediate present).

Greetings from an easy world

A diagram conceived by an origamist allows the reproduction of the same crushed paper ball.

Everything he had left aside was suddenly firing back like millions of stars

You Would Have Seen It Happen If You Hadn't Been Looking Somewhere Else

Pride

Pride was born in 1904 with the golden age of oil industry. The city kept on growing until 1947 when due to the lack of a major road, it started to decline and finally disappeared. On the deserted site, 300 pounds of tar were poured (spread) on the road raising its height by a one inch lump.

Milky Ways

Texts

Presentation

Within an eclectic body of work, one can underline Mark Geffriaud’s (b. 1977, lives and works in Paris) interest for monuments dedicated to non events. Questions of disappearance and emptiness appear regularly in his work, which plays repeatedly with key elements such as books or light. Focusing on images and forms’ apparition (circulation) and disappearance (oblivion), Mark Geffriaud’s works draw a fragmented archaeology in which misunderstanding as a cognitive process plays a great part.

Free associations, formal comparisons and false fictions allow the artist to share a kind of subtle and shifted perception of the world. From missing data in the different forms of the series Renseignements Généraux (2006-2008) - named after the French secret service, literally meaning “global information”, that the artist has developed around an archival process of images from various sources organized on formal and often loose associations meant to back up an absent text dedicated to a book which is never intended to be finished or published - to the realization of a (non-)monument dedicated to the memory of a disappeared city (Pride, 2007) or to the materialization of an imaginary road in the US desert (Milky Ways, 2007), Mark Geffriaud’s works suggest an absence and tends to create a fragmentary universe in which the viewer is invited to project his own representations and personal narratives. Roche, 2008, consists for instance on a slide projection of blue, red and orange monochromes onto a copy of the polyphonic novel Compact by Maurice Roche, in which each voice is written in a different colour, precisely erasing or intensifying some parts of the book.

However, if the use of books or pages torn from books is recurrent in his practice, this is not so much to highlight specific references but rather to question the physical qualities that books as objects and sources of knowledge and transmission represent. Indeed, in the series Mires, 2008, pages of books from various origins are framed between transparent plates of Plexiglas allowing the viewer to look at the recto and at the verso of each page in the same time. A single glimpse thus not only allows for example to discover Witold Gombrowicz with his dog on one side or playing chess on the other but also to look at Gombrowicz playing chess with his dog due to the transparency of the paper. This is also the case in the series Herbarium in which the light of slide projectors (moving according to the slide shows) goes through the holes in the wall behind framed book pages revealing different parts of them on the other side.

Creating visual and semantic shortcuts, these works suggest that accidents and arbitrary decisions can be productive and create knowledge. This switch from arbitrary gestures to scientific and rational decisions is particularly obvious in the pieces Greetings from an easy world, 2007 in which a diagram thoroughly conceived by an origamist allows the reproduction of the same paper ball crushed by the artist or in Alpabeth, 2007, a wallpaper in which the letters of all the alphabets in use on earth today are mixed up together and reclassified according to their shape, designing in this way an evolving wallpaper pattern.

The installation Polka Dot exhibited in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2008 is in this sense also quite representative of Geffriaud’s artistic practice. Projected from a slide projector animated by a circular movement, the first photographic image ever taken of the sun briefly lights various posters (pages from magazines, photographs, etc) hung at different heights on the walls of an almost totally dark room. At the end of each rotation, the light remains for a while during which it is reflected by a mirror onto the centre pages of a book standing upright on a shelf. Tiny holes in the pages let the light go through the other side, engaging the photos in a back to back conversation. One can only slowly discover each image that is part of the installation and in a second time try to connect them to build up a possible and ever to be sought and repeated meaning or narrative. A low-tech video installation – a fixed image animates other fixed images – or a book in the scale of a room, Polka Dot questions the way we look at things with notions of theatricality, (deceived) entertainment and short-term memory.

The light piece Present Perfect, 2007, is remarkable in that sense. By intervening on the lighting of the exhibition space to illuminate empty white walls, Mark Geffriaud suggests the location of works hung in the past and their current absence but also points out the possible location of the works to come. He creates this way a mental picture between remembrance and projection which, through an invisible electronic device, flickers almost imperceptibly during the blink of an eye. Repeated every 20 or 50 seconds, this disturbance of vision is based on the pace of the putamen, a central part of the brain linked to temporary memory and by extension to our perception of immediate present. Endlessly reiterated, this interruption of the luminous flux appears as the sign of a perfect loop of the present time or of the awareness that we have of it. Present Perfect or the allegory of our times.

Yoann Gourmel

Press Articles

Click on the underlined parts to download the texts in pdf

2009

Mousse Magazine, #18, interview with Francesca di Nardo, April - May.

Artforum, review by Joanna Fiduccia, avril.

Particules, #23, "Centrales Périphéries", interview with Stéphane Corréard, February - March.

Artforum.com, "Critics' picks", by Emily Verla Bovino, February.

Exit Express, #41, “Mark Geffriaud”, by Guillaume Désanges, February.

Le Journal des arts, #296, “Multiplier les points de vue”, interview with Frédéric Bonnet, 6 - 21 February.

Les Inrockuptibles, #688, review by Judicaël Lavrador, 3 - 9 February.

2008

Zérodeux, #47, "Drôles de médiums", by Mathilde Villeneuve, Automn.

Art 21, # 17, "Tout le reste", by Yoann Gourmel, May - June.

Art 21, # 17, "220 jours", by Rémi Parcollet, May - June.

Les Inrockuptibles, #643, "220 jours de fête", by Judicaël Lavrador, 25 - 31 March.