B-Galleria Open Call for Autumn 2024 - Proposal (David Crunelle)
PRESENTATION
After working on collecting and building a series of works called ELECTRUM at the end of 2019 and early 2020, the exhibition that was supposed to take place ended up being an online exhibition, shown during the first lockdown period in April 2020. While the whole experience turned out great considering the times we were all going through, this series missed an opportunity: its visual interaction with the audience.
The ELECTRUM series was made using 3D lenticulars, flip lenticulars, holograms, and reflective materials, all of which are highly reactive with light and positioning of the viewer. It is impossible for two people to see the same thing at the same time due to the nature of the materials used.
My proposal is to finally show the installation as it was initially conceived: as walls of works aligned, to multiply the effects instead of keeping them as single pieces. By walking, or simply tilting, the viewers will have the effects of the lenticulars and reflective materials multiplied by the number of pieces on display, as a wholly immersive experience.
PRACTICAL INFO
There are between 40 pieces of 30x40cm and 5 to 6 pieces of 50x70cm. All the 30x40cm pieces are mounted on wooden boxes painted with vantablack; they only need one small nail to be hung, and are quite light (600gr each). The bigger pieces can be hung using bent needles or double-sided tape, or eventually mounted on a wooden board. Lighting should be very strong but LED works perfectly well while reducing the consumption/carbon footprint, which are topics I am very much attached to.
Here below, a mockup of the bigger pieces (50x70cm) could be shown, using directional spots. From the streets, the vivid colors and shiny effects can be seen as well as the movement from the 3D lenticulars used in these composition, allowing already some interactions with the people just walking by.
Technically, all these compositions are hand cut. No laser cutting or machinery is used at any stage. The materials are : lenticulars (PVC, flip and 3D), paper, acrylic, epoxy, on wooden boards.
During the second lockdown in 2020, I made an online workshop to help people learning how to make similar artwork, and used their locked time in a creative way.
I have been doing several workshops since 2016, I have been a lecturer in visual communication for more than 10 years and if it is something that could be considered and/or requested, we can naturally consider organizing simple, easy to access, free and short workshop sessions to learn about several techniques used in the making of this series.
ELECTRUM presentation text (excerpt)
The conquistadors who embarked on the perilous voyage to the Americas dreamed of gold and glory. Officially soldiers of Christ, setting out to evangelize – and therefore save – the pagans of the New World, they sought the El Dorado more than the City of God. (…) Despite massacres and destruction, no one found the El Dorado. Even worse, the gold that was discovered was often not really gold… As brilliant as it was, this gold often turned out to be electrum, containing a high proportion of silver, much less precious.
Shiny and attractive like gold, electrum has no value… Why? If only the beauty of precious metals fascinated us, the composition of an alloy would matter little to us. But, beyond appearances and uses, the question of purity and rarity shape our evaluation, and we prefer pure gold, even when we are unable to distinguish it from the alloy without chemical analysis.
The same is true of images. What is the value of this painting which flatters our eyes, which combines perspectives and colors, which shines and reveals different realities according to the movement of the observer, but which is only made of images produced in large series and which do not arouse ordinary than our mockery? What is it made of? What is its alloy? (…)
No doubt it is the geometric rigor, the cold intellectuality of the graphic combinations which allows the “ELECTRUM” series not to be trapped in its basic material; so one might wonder whether the process, rather than starting from precious substances to bastard them into a deceptively flattering mixture, does not work in reverse. Starting from vile but shimmering materials, he would combine them into an alloy of great visual value. This is precisely what “ELECTRUM” is: a challenge to our ability to distinguish alloy from purity.
