Artist, exhibition curator, art critic, Aurélien Mole builds a work of which one of the issues is the exhibition. For Photo Levallois 2012, he designed a set of photographs knowing that they would be exhibited in the open air — and in full light — near the town hall.
The starting point for this new work is therefore the exhibition context itself, the analysis of which provides the artist with milestones on which to build. Being an exhibition in the public space, moreover in backlit billboards, Aurélien Mole immediately decided to echo the kind of images dominating our urban journeys: the advertising poster. In this field, photography plays a major role of persuasion, since consumer products are presented with a view to being sold. Indeed, it is the idealized image, presenting the object in an advantageous perfection, deliberately ignoring its contingency and its fragility, which is the mainspring of consumption. Manufacturers have an interest in exacerbating this imbalance between the all-powerful representation and the object itself, whose rapid wear and tear offers a guarantee of renewal of the purchase in the short term.
On the strength of this observation, the artist decided to experiment in a concrete way with this competition between the everyday consumer object and its photographic representation. To do this, he placed reproductions of objects in poster format in billboards. Sweets, a Polaroid, a book, an election poster, are staged in a neutral way. The photographer does not make them play the comedy of perfection out of reach, the one that aims to trigger the impulse to buy. A common characteristic presided over their gathering: prolonged exposure to light degrades them. Essential quality of photography as well, which Aurélien Mole underlines in a mischievous way.
These posters will remain on display in the public space for the duration of the festival, i.e. approximately six weeks. It is likely that UV radiation, bad weather, temperature variations and why not, interaction with passers-by will affect them and cause them to age. However, the artist guarantees that the wear of these photographs will be less brutal than that of the objects represented themselves, if they had been placed in similar conditions.
Through this experience, Aurélien Mole pursues his interest in the question of the aging of images, a problem in which the materiality of photographs is exacerbated.
Finally, it introduces irregularities into a daily visual experience most often lived passively, as advertising imagery is perceived as part of the environment. In this way, this enigmatic avant-garde placed along the railings of the garden of the town hall, proposes to highlight the way in which we daily experience photographic images in the real world - that they contribute to model, as well as our understanding of them.
— Paul Freches