over the top, undercover

Roaming around the city, the edges of objects, the spirals of language and sometimes of obsession, the works of Jonathan Martin, R. Moreno, and Clémence de La Tour du Pin engage with the dynamics that shape perception. Each of them identifies and subverts tactics used to guide the eye, channel desire and lives — to break through or disturb the automatic. Over the top, undercover tunes into these tensions within the sensible realm, its manipulations, its elasticity. The exhibition reveals a makeup like logic present in all things, when what is highlighted depends on what we attempt to cover up. Artists look at what staged scenes conceal, what they express in codes — the mechanism of the unconscious, of debt, of delirium. 

It could be said of Jonathan Martin’s work that it acts via perturbations, conflicting impulses, midway between euphoria and stasis. The cold language of media, communication, of the music or entertainment industry is, in turns, intensified or interrupted. Through films, sound pieces, and publications, Jonathan Martin restructures gaze through an intimacy with objects, an implosive relationship with language. Everything here is somewhat electric, sometimes on edge : after or at the threshold of climax. 

Dynamics of expansion and limitation are also present throughout the work of Clémence de La Tour du Pin. Using anamorphoses and layering, the artist creates assemblages in which matter condenses, sometimes cracks; where elements accumulate into textures, tear into patterns, and seem to communicate via magnetic affect. Among other things, Clémence de La Tour du Pin works with specific historical archives, serving as an anchor for various types of research : imagery of subatomic particles or industrial oil complexes, which she sometimes puts in conversation with personal photographs, fragments of music videos or pop icons — each used as entry points for understanding how perception is shaped as a force field. 

The way power presents itself —the way domination is structured and sometimes even geometrized — is also a framework in the work of R. Moreno. Through orbital trajectories, games of optical distortion and collage, the artist builds worlds both glamorous and DIY, cosmetic and robotic, putting their inner workings on display while imagining their own revolutions. Urbanity, identity, relationships, and language are understood as technologies ; all organize experience, automate themselves, and occasionally glitch, suggesting other dimensions of existence—latent, ideal— of existence.

“Over the top, undercover’’ feels somewhat like espionage, scrutinizing what goes on beyond or beneath surfaces — in particles of air, the lining of clothes, the insides of handbags. It features suspicious, sometimes magnified visions; rotating poems, underlying optical illusions. Some of the pieces work with frequencies, scanning the space through sound, creating fields of interference from one end of the room to the other — an overheating white cube, where lipstick mixes with asphalt and brain tissue. The exhibition  unfolds in vantage points and hidden doors, towards what shapes our understanding of fantasy, control, and interference. It eventually drifts beyond the detectable: works of seduction and transfer, infestations and short-circuits

Salomé Burstein, Exhibition curator

_{Credit: © Des Signes}