Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini at Artmonte-Carlo
Presentation of the work of the winners of 17th Prize Fondation d’entreprise Ricard.
Florian Pugnaire and David Raffini first met at the Villa Arson in Nice in 2006. To this day, they share not only a studio, but a common guiding thread in their creative practice: foregrounding the processes involved in making art, particularly the changes apparent in everyday objects as they transmogrify into works of art.
The project presented for artmonte-carlo echoes earlier installations in which Pugnaire & Raffini already used vehicles. The bodywork withstands or yields to the deliberate accidents and planned hazards that lie along their course. The materials are put to a series of tests before being reborn in new form. A film, generally shot as fiction, reflects the transformation of the vehicles into hybrid sculptures and the successive stages of their metamorphosis.
The works are closely bound up with their artistic practice and with action and performance. The artists cultivate a middle ground where the finality of the undertaking is not always clearly defined and where the concept of the studio takes on particular resonance as a site where everything is up for invention or modification.
The 17th Prize Fondation d’entreprise Ricard has been awarded to the
artist duo Florian Pugnaire and David Raffini during the exhibition « The Order of Fireflies », curated by Marc-Olivier Wahler. Their works “In fine” and
“Casse pipe” will enter the collection of the Centre Pompidou. They
will also benefit of a 2-month residency at Fahrenheit – Flax Foundation
in Los Angeles.
