DOMINIQUE PETITGAND : Con voci e senza (23/5/06 - 8/7/06)

Since his emergence in 1992, French artist Dominique Petitgand has authored a body of work investigating sound/space relations that is among the most original in the field. In his works, through a montage of voices, silence, noises and music a series of micro-universes take shape which are suspended between the reality principle (recordings of people speaking about their own lives) and projection into dreamlike fictions of a free-floating, atemporal character.
A mental space where the repetition and instability of self, places and temporal structures evoke the movement by which memory itself is constructed.
Petitgand's use of sound places his work in a singular yet highly mobile territory.
He has presented his works in the form of sound installations, on CD and in performances that more resemble concerts which take place in darkness.
In the artists's words, Petitgand's exhibition for e/static "articulates various forms of apparition connected to words, text, sound, the acts of listening and reading (not to mention their multiple echoes): voices, subtitles, comments, music. The work is comprised of a bi-lingual sound installation (of a number of stories recounted in French and Italian and set to music) together with a series of texts ("Les pieces manquantes/the missing pieces", on seven pieces of paper affixed to the walls). The sound pieces are designed to set in motion a specific relationship with the gallery space, creating the possibility for different levels of reading and listening, an intuitive, sensorial and poetic approach to the stories that is progressive in character, composed of different stages and directions".

Born 1965 in Laxou, he lives in Paris. He usually makes 'site specific' installations, and among his most recent solo shows are: the one he made at gb agency in Paris in 2001; the 'sound project' at Liste 03 in Basel, in 2003, presented by gb agency; that same year a solo show at Circuit Gallery in Lausanne; in 2004 "La gorge sèche" at Site Capécure in Boulogne-sur-mer; in 2005 "Voix blanches" at Centre Culturel Francais of Milan and "Quelq'un par terre" at Transpalette, Bourges; finally, in 2006, right before estatic's solo show, "Mon possible" at Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, and "Sound in the Elevator" at Art in General, New York (in this town he sojourned for six months last year, with a ISCP Résidence). He has also published several several cds with his sound pieces.

Monday 22nd may at 6 pm meeting with the artist at Centre Culturel Français, via Pomba 23 in Torino.

Thanks to Centre Culturel Français de Turin (www.france-italia.it/index.php?lingua=it&menu=7).

[press release 12/5/06]