Quentin Gassiat wanders around European cities, looking for derelict walls. Paris, Rome, Odessa, Kiev, Bucarest… On these walls still proliferate commercial posters, where little shopkeepers, entertainment companies, big consumer brands will try to attract the passerby's attention in order to sell her something and solicit her wallet.
But the passerby does not hesitate to tear off, to lacerate, to unglue. Following this anonymous and collective act, the initial message becomes unintelligible. Looting or diverting these avatars of mass communication: most of us have done this one day or another.
Then the passerby leaves room for the time that passes, the rigours of nature which wash out the surfaces, modify borderings, clear out colours. Pieces tear off, revealing other gestures, other seasons. From what was originally intended as a targeted clarity, an advertising message, we are left with a colourful patchwork.
Thus we have in front of our eyes some urban sedimentations.
Their constant: a human look, which despite its lost message, still calls us and looks inside us. Mirror of the artist's eyes, who is strolling the urban streets like an entomologist, paying tribute to those ephemeral posters by photographing them without any alteration, as to engrave the formal beauty of those dereliction fragments.
Extract of the catalog published for Quentin Gassiat's solo show in Milan, from 21 to 23 March 2019.
