CYRIL DUVAL / ITEM IDEM’S TIKI DAZZLE FACADE
“VOIRE DIRE” SEP 16 - OCT 11
In celebration of Fashion Week Studio55 has chosen artist & designer Cyril Duval aka ITEM IDEM, to redress the NeueHouse windows. Cyril, a French-born conceptual artist, has worked with the likes of Comme des Garçons and Tobias Wong. His first US solo show entitled VOIR DIRE will open on September 13th at Johannes Vogt Gallery.
The graphic textures he has envisioned to grace the NeueHouse windows are a nod to Cyril’s longtime admiration for Razzle Dazzle - the camouflage technique applied on battleships during WWI - which the artist has redrawn in a Tiki Pop fashion directly referring to his upcoming exhibition.
Cyril Duval is known best by the several pseudonyms under which his practice evolves, including the fictional alter ego Item Idem and the collaborative project Shanzhai Biennial.
Duval’s oeuvre is keynoted by his collaborations and a seamless dispersion within a wide variety of fields of cultural production. Expertly moving between the worlds of visual art, fashion performance, and design, Duval often circumvents the usual circuits of distribution and visibility injecting his work directly into culture at large.
Voir Dire at Johannes Vogt Gallery is a presentation of new works centered around Duval’s fascination with the visual tropes of late capitalism, and his embrace of their inherent promises and failures. Included is a new series of wall works entitled Princess Diaries, created from détourned cross-stitch patterns of popular Disney princesses in dyed bamboo artist frames. In another body of work, the artist made support structures, constructed from various heavily branded cereal boxes and acrylic panels, will hold altered and found objects. The pedestals host three Easter Island heads covered in bubble gum, latex, silk flowers and other materials, along side a melted princess-themed Disney Lego set.
The rear room of the gallery is dedicated to the premiere large-scale screening of JOSS, a video Duval has made in collaboration with Chinese artist Cheng Ran. The video depicts a series of exploding paper objects traditionally burned at funerals as a way of giving gifts to the deceased. It is intended to function in a multitude of instantiations both on and off line.
The exhibition is underscored by its titular piece, Voir Dire, a framed copy of McDonald’s Chairman Ray Kroc’s message to McDonald’s crew members in 1979, with a pedestalled pillow covered in counterfeit McDonald’s fabric and holding a pile of artificial sweeteners collected from McDonalds restaurants in Berlin. The work’s auditory component, a monolog from Kroc and several McDonald’s theme songs, will play for the duration.
Cyril Duval was born in Paris in 1977 and currently lives and works in New York City. He has worked on exhibitions, fashion lines, operas and design projects internationally. His work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Garage Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; New Museum, New York; PERFORMA 13, New York; and he has produced commissioned works for NADA Miami Beach and Frieze London.
Forthcoming projects include Shanzhai Biennial No.3 at Frieze Live, London, 2014.
*voir dire | ˈvwär ˈdi(ə)r | • a preliminary examination of a witness or a juror by a judge or counsel. • an oath taken by such a witness. ORIGIN Law French, from Old French voir ‘true’ + dire ‘say.’
Johannes Vogt Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment. For further details please contact Nate Hitchcock at nate@vogtgallery.com or at 212.255.2671