Fabrice Gygi

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Through May 4

Swiss artist Fabrice Gygi’s approach to making art shows he has a marked social and political commitment, which aims to focus on the mechanisms of authority that surround us every day. In his work, however, this critical take on society, with which he profoundly disagrees, is never expressed aggressively but aims particularly to emphasize the order of things.

Gygi attempts to establish a completely new relationship between reality inside the world of art and outside it, by questioning the sanctioned values of both. He seems determined to eliminate what has been rendered sacred and hierarchical in art, so that it is transformed from an object to be contemplated into the jumping off point for a series of reflections.

Following an initial phase in which he was mostly involved with rather radical performances, Gygi has been building temporary constructions since 1998 from tubular structures, canvas sheets, and planks that become meeting places, bars, and podiums for parties, sporting, or religious events.

In the exhibition in Paris, the first room contains a number of round bar tables, which are in fact trash containers, and a squalid marquee bar. In the second room, on the other hand, there is a moveable platform from which deafening music plays continuously. The rooms on the floor below contain two other equally surprising works. The first is a bizarre distributor for lighted candles, which looks exactly like a normal vending machine for cigarettes or drinks. The second is an enormous yellow airbag kept permanently inflated by a noisy motor, which the visitor can jump on as if in a playground for children.

On leaving the exhibition the feeling is one of relief. But a deep, unsettling sensation lingers on, forcing one to reflect on Gygi’s work.




Francesco Poli
Translation by Robin Poppelsdorff