‘De 10h à 4h du matin’, solo show by Antoine Donzeaud

‘De 10h à 4h du matin’ - Je vis je visser - PNL

In every of their songs - besides fancy clothes, money and trips - they rap above all else about their routine hard work. All day everyday standing at the street corner, selling, making calls, turning the street into an office ; stranded couches into office chairs ; dealing is like working at the factory ; it comes down to helping the family ; in the summer going away on holiday then coming back and starting all over again.
I wanted to reflect on these references to hard work, practice and training.
The imagery silkscreen-printed on tarp collages borrows to this street narrative while factory- produced windows bearing light tinted plastic sheets divide the space and induce intimacy, echoed in the video of a teenager performing hand gestures until perfect dexterity. A series of oversized raincoats hang on the wall like ghost figures hovering in the space ; or might be simply a uniform to cover yourself ; while painting in the studio ; or selling drugs on the street.

Antoine Donzeaud, October 2016.

We enter the gallery, passing a flight of large scale work on stretchers; imagery the artist collected of disfunct billboards and discarded pass-by objects, sitting in the streets of his day to day commute through Paris' neighborhoods.
In contrast to the eclectic "faire la bise", the gallery's main exhibition space presents a new body of "transparencies", reminiscent of previously produced, semi translucent two-sided paintings. Prefabricated window panes carry foil the artist decorated individually with his default signature mark making. Lined up along the gallery walls are Vetememes coats the artist tracked down online, miming the street - turned high -fashion label Vetements; the artist conflates network tongue with anonymous production standards, defining a language around individual and communal production within the economy of appropriation.

Andreas Waris.