Practices
Collection
Our spaces
Right bank and left bank of the Rhône,
two raw places at the heart of the creative process.
On the margins, yet still marked by a hint of relevance.
We will be happy to welcome you there...
Guidance
We accompany you in your relationship with art, from discovery to acquisition ...
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Reflections
About
His life's path is inseparable from movement and the body: from a crossing of Latin America by bicycle (1996-1997) to two decades spent as a rowing coach on the Rhône, not forgetting an assiduous practice of Gallo-Roman archaeology in the region. This sensory experience of water and effort has left a lasting mark on his aesthetic research.
His current practice brings painting together with photography, drawing and printmaking.
In the past it was video, performance and video installation.
Narrative and probably autobiographical, on the edge between the fragility of childhood and the wild power of nature,
his approach cultivates an aesthetic of tension in which apparent serenity and underlying brutality meet in an unstable balance. As on archaeological digs (cubic metres turned over for a hypothetical fragment that might carry meaning) or during training sessions on the water (gestures repeated ad nauseam in search of the perfect movement), his work advances slowly, through layers and accepted disappointments.
Between dark glimmers and uncertain lights, he seeks that tenuous passage where memory can become trace and clumsiness a structuring marker.
Manifesto
Contemporary art? Like nouvelle cuisine or alternative rock: dated and dusty as hell. Given my “training”, I ought to be a good customer. I am no longer even a critic. If football, wine and cinema leave me cold, then contemporary art ought to have something other than variations on dildos and colonoscopies to offer if it wants to tickle me. This is not showing off: it is the “I can see what they are up to”, ad nauseam, that saturates one's judgement. I have already given.
At the entrance interview for the Beaux-Arts — a painting of a Roman galley sprinkled with seminal fluid — they hadn't a clue. I was beating them at their own game.
“Welcome, sir.”
There followed: expressionist Super 8, Sadean animations on glass plates, carnal video mixing porn, Sade and Céline with a Poussin-like grain, installations, sonic saturation, singing, politics, sport, doping, performances, dances. The Old Port blocked with sardines.
Always with an aesthetic concern, never iconoclastic. That was where the real provocation lay.
98 points on the Contemporary-Art-Pass. That is where I speak from.
These established artists ought to play the part of the Pythia, with a wolf's hunger:
they seem well and truly extinguished.
Technological means, institutional legitimacy, colour TV, 3D, A.I.:
they are already dead.
Contact us
Whether you wish to acquire a work, arrange a private visit, collaborate on an interior architecture project or simply learn more about our work, we are here to listen.
Avignon studio
rue carnot, 84000 Avignon
Opening hours
By appointment
contact@alexandretanham.com
Phone
+33 1 42 60 XX XX
