Aurélien Froment, Théâtre de poche, 2007. Courtesy Motive Gallery.
Bonniers Konsthall opens its autumn season with magical memories and classical illusions. The French artist Aurélien Froment is showing the video installation Théâtre de Poche (Pocket Theatre) and the monologue Le chiffre à la lettre (Code Countdown). This is the first exhibition in the Nordic countries by this internationally renowned artist.
In Théâtre de Poche Froment has been inspired by the magician Arthur Lloyd, who in the 1930s became known as the “Human Card Index”. Lloyd made a career for himself by being able – in response to requests from the audience – to take virtually any kind of printed item out of his pocket (in which he kept over 15,000 pieces of paper). Froment shows us a man dressed in black, like Lloyd, played by the magician Stéphane Corréas, who pulls one picture after another out of his pocket. Family photos and playing cards, film stills and reproductions of old works of art follow each other in rapid succession. The pictures are spread out in space and appear to float in front of the man, who arranges them into different groups. All this to the accompaniment of drumrolls and whale song.
Le chiffre à la lettre, meanwhile, is based on an interview with the French magician Benoit Rosemont. Rosemont talks about magic and ingenious techniques for memorising numbers. He shares his own tricks with us, and reveals the methods of older colleagues. This is Froment’s latest work, and it premiered earlier this year at Khastoo Gallery in Los Angeles. In Stockholm, the monologue will be performed by the Swedish actor Johan Holmberg several times during the exhibition period. In collaboration with the Royal Dramatic Theatre.
Froment works with a highly diverse range of media, everything from film and photography to sculpture and performance. He is interested in the way we perceive the images that surround us, and his works often play with illusions: flattened perspectives, shifting scales, and vanishing objects. In Théâtre de Poche, he brings together an apparently random selection of images to create new connections and meanings.
Aurélien Froment (born 1976) lives and works in Dublin. He was educated at the art schools in Nantes and Rennes, and has contributed to numerous exhibitions internationally, including at De Appel in Amsterdam, Gasworks, London and
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, as well as at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The video installation is one of a series of exhibitions at Bonniers Konsthall presenting a work by artists who are important in contemporary art right now. This same strand has previously included showings at the Konsthall of films by Salla Tykkä, Adrian Paci and Ann-Sofi Sidén.
Aurélien Froment: Pocket Theatre
28 August – 11 October 2009
Le chiffre à la lettre (Code Countdown)
Bonniers Konsthall: 27 Aug at 6.15 pm & 8.30 pm and 10 Oct at 2.30 pm.
Dramaten, Tornrummet: 29 Aug at 1 pm and 21 Nov at 5 pm.