FLORENT AUDOYE

FLORENT AUDOYE
Born in 1985 in Montpellier (France)
Lives and works in Paris
70 rue Philippe de Girard
75018 Paris
France
[email protected]
www.florentaudoye.fr
+ 33 6 50 12 72 11
A form is an insult. Truly the enemy of art. It insinuates itself everywhere in ordinary life to
reduce the "routine" to crumbs and to make it an unordinary life, a life cut into pieces, pieces
of a cadaver. A form is the pact with the devil that each applicant must sign before entering
Hell. A form is ugly, it is designed by artists that have been enclosed, hit, tortured, subjected
to blackmail: "Now, jerk artist you are going to design us a form for all the future slave fillers
of forms, if not you will have nothing to eat." The artist designs a form, but it is not right, he
must do it again because it is not ugly enough, not aesthetically bad enough; it is not
artistically insulting enough. He must work on it four or five times before his "design" is
finally accepted; by the puke of the colours, the kitsch of the photos, the outdated fonts, the
perversion of all divine proportions, he reaches the summit of abjection. A form that we will
be able to print, distribute and make many people fill in who will not notice anything, they
will take it for a game where there are checkboxes to be filled.The checkbox is the universal
language of the form. In Chinese, Russian, Arabic, English, the checkbox is the only thing
that can be recognized from one form to another. There is no longer any first name, last name,
no date of birth, from now on there are only letters and figures to be put into checkboxes. And
humanity happily submits to the exercise, with its pen it ticks, crosses out, fills, happy to
identify itself, determine itself, it has the impression of existing, and even of expressing itself
while, divided into Mr. Mrs. Ms., without knowing, it enters regression, it melts, reduces and
silences itself.
And then one day, Florent Audoye, in front of the form of an application dossier to become a
team member for Quick, the shit hit, as the ancients said. The shit, it is truly that. The shit
against the clean, the sanitized, the dead and against the lie to which he was being asked to
submit to join Quick. Invent Mr., Mrs. or Ms., a lie worthy of a small checkbox. He was on
his bicycle, according to what he told me, or what I thought I heard and remembered, he was
on his bicycle and enlightenment came to him while he was thinking about what he had just
filled in. He went back to Quick, he seized the form and he wrote: "I need money." But it was
too good for them; he kept the sheet of paper which had become a work of art.
Florent Audoye has the virtue of not transforming these sparks of lucidity into damning
illumination of "our society." His presentation does not produce any discourse on misery,
youth, politics, employment, all these niches that are purveyors of forms. His art is fragile, as
far as the humour that distils discretely.
The form and the formula of art, Christophe Donner, 2013
My artistic practice revolves around drawings or diagrams found in scientific, artistic and
technical handbooks. I also use patterns compiled in collections of applied art books. After
collecting all kinds of original administrative documents (at my work places or randomly
during my travels…), I intervene on this particular print area to disrupt the pre-established
and conventional forms. The superimposition of these poetic hand drawings upon the
administrative document (frozen in its print format) has a particular interest for me.
An uncaptioned quotation accompanies each project: it is taken from text snippets extracted
from consulted books, and aims, in an ironic approach, at formulating a pseudo-scientific
caption. The hanging technique and display method are specific to each document. My idea is
to stress the paradoxical status of the paper medium: both fragile and perishable and, at the
same time, directive and authoritarian as an administrative document.
The performance work that I develop in parallel extends this subversive and humorous
approach. In these lectures and performances that I call “Seminar”, I pastiche the bureaucratic
and administrative world from which I extracted those documents. Different rhythms pace the
narrative sequence of the performances: repetitive actions are framed and punctuated by more
spectacular, intense moments. The rigor and austerity of the documents find a poetic and
burlesque counterpoint in my theatrical stagings with sound, light, video projections or
accessories.
Florent Audoye
FANTOME (Ghost), 2014
Drawing with black pigment liner on conservative original document of Centre Pompidou
29,7 x 21 cm (document), 35,3 x 26,3 cm (frame), unique edition, courtesy Florent Audoye
Séminaire #2 (Dynamique de connaissance et d'évolution)
Seminar #2 (Dynamic of knowledge and evolution)
Performance-conference in 3 actions, 13'20'', with the performer-dancer Alexandre Bibia
Closing night for the 60 years of the Salon de Montrouge, June 3, 2015
Autorisation pour l'exportation ou l'importation de biens susceptibles d'être utilisés à des
fins de torture (Authorization for exportation or importation of goods likely to be used for
torture purposes), 2014
Drawing with black pigment liner on administrative European Union document cerfa
n°12722*01
Serial of 6 documents, 29,7 x 21 cm (each), unique edition, courtesy Florent Audoye
The European Union customs legislation is first based on a chronological definition of
contemporary art combined not with a category of art, but with the life of the artists. Are
indeed considered as contemporary as part of the export procedure works by living artists or,
in the case of deceased artists, works older than twenty. The border of this "contemporary"
art is thus in perpetual motion.
Déclaration trimestrielle de droits d'auteur et de remunerations (Semestrial declaration of
authorship rights and remunerations), 2014
Drawing with black pigment liner on administrative document “La Maison des Artistes”
29,7 x 21 cm, unique edition, courtesy Florent Audoye
(on the left) Paris, 2013
Grey pencil on 3 detached pages of the Moleskine City Notebook Paris
14 x 8,5 cm (each), 24,5 x 44,5 cm (framed), unique edition, courtesy Florent Audoye
(on the right) Cartel de Paris, 2014
Print on administrative document (from Institut de céramique française: exhibition’s place)
29,7 x 21 cm, multiple for the exhibition "Avant-Garden", Cartel de Kunst
Oeuvres graphiques : constat d'état (Graphic works: condition report), 2014
Drawings with black pigment liner on artworks’ condition report of the Château de Versailles
29,7 x 21 cm (each), serial of 5 documents, unique edition, courtesy: Florent Audoye
GOOGLE TRAD VF#1, May 15, 2014
Play for one performer in 6 acts, 18'30''
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, 2013
Writing with blue fineliner on franco-canadian administrative documents
Installation with 5 documents, book on shelf, variable dimension, courtesy Florent Audoye
The Australian nurse Bronnie Ware has, over the course of many years, collected the remorse
and the regrets of her patients in palliative care. She has then built the Top Five Regrets of the
Dying in a book published in 2012: « I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings », « I
wish I had stayed in touch with my friends », « I wish I had let myself be happier », « I wish
I’h had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me », « I wish I
hadn’t worked so hard ».
Enquête auprès des visiteurs pour les 30 ans des Frac (survey of the visitors for the 30th
anniversary of the Frac), 2013
Right/wrong institutional and communication document for the FRAC Île-de-France
29,7 x 21 cm, multiple of 100 sheets, courtesy Florent Audoye
On the occasion of a workshop at the FRAC Ile-de-France, and in collaboration with artist
Julien Prévieux, a « fake » survey questionnaire was made available for viewers during the
exhibitions of Spring 2013. This document, between real stats inspired by other museums’
surveys and additions of fallacious boxes, was a reappropriation of Visitors’ Profile, a work
by Hans Haacke, re-adapted to the context of the 30th anniversary of the FRAC (the regional
art centers in France).
Le RSA, c’est aussi pour les jeunes (RSA is also for the young), 2011
Drawing with black pigment liner on information document of the “Allocations Familiales”
(the French governmental organization to financially support families)
21x21cm, unique edition, courtesy: Florent Audoye