Fluorescence, 2017

Stencils, neon green marking paint / Variable dimensions

Exhibition Infiltration, APDV Art Center, invited by Valérie Barot.

Apdv - Centre d'art was born of the desire to place artistic action at the heart of social reality, and more specifically within the low-income housing of the RIVP 4001 group located at Porte de Vincennes in Paris. The project consists in reinventing and reinvesting spaces qualified as intermediaries between private and public space, including janitor's lodges. But also courtyards, corridors and gardens...

For the Infiltration exhibition, following an immersion and careful observation of the site, I propose to infiltrate a certain number of undesirables into the HLM group. The works Guests, Fluorescence and Replicant.

Fluorescence are stencils representing weeds, painted on the walls of the RIVP complex with a temporary fluorescent green marking paint. Street art stencils, like wild vegetation, are like a spontaneous generation that the city strives to control, if not eradicate. Here, they represent and multiply weeds naturally present in the residence they take as a model, and echo them with a symmetrical arrangement in space. This symmetry is reminiscent of the regular layout of French gardens, which I try to recreate with weeds (cf. Friche à la française). As the exhibition progresses, the weeds disappear and appear in other places, leaving the random trace of the stencils to illuminate the ground.