The exhibition OBJECT.STRUCTURE.SCULPTURE by Gregoire Rousseau materializes the intersection between two specific fields within his art practice. In Rousseau’s work first comes the necessity of the form and the position of the material as a language to produce form and content. The process of the artwork deals with devices that result in demystification or attempted demystification of the process. In this context the ’deals with’ does not mean ’represents’ or ‘documents’ since the works do not document, estheticize or represent any various technical procedures. Form is meant as a formal operation, not as a composition. Also, form must be distinguished from style; otherwise it serves merely in its reactionary sense.
Rousseau’s artistic practice involves technology and electricity as a language to produce artworks. This has been present ever since an audio performance in 1999 when he designed a green box modulation of square wave oscillators. As Rousseau puts it: “Electricity, a very specific form of energy, cannot be grasped. We can only experience manifestation of electricity: light, heat, sound and motion.” His electronic design uses component from the market and what is produced becomes an object with a function.
OBJECT.STRUCTURE.SCULPTURE sets the onlooker in a position in which time, duration, motion, sound, and visual content operate together to activate situations where function of the object continues to contradict, play and develop its form. Rousseau’s work explores, or rather experiments, with the relation between the function of an object, defined by its social usage and its image as the alienation of the object. The artworks we see in Titanik articulate images, volumes and kinetic sculptures, as they are an act of transformation, a sculptural process.
Gregoire Rousseau on ranskalainen kuvataiteilija, joka on asunut Helsingissä vuodesta 2000. Hän on valmistunut kandidaatiksi Tolousen yliopistosta ja EVTEK-ammattikorkeakoulusta. Rousseau työskentelee performanssin ja installaatioiden parissa, hän tekee tutkimusta ja työskentelee aktiivisesti elektronisen taiteen kentällä. Vuodesta 2001 Rousseau on ollut mukana audiovisuaalisessa yhtiössä Tuulanauhat, joka tuottaa kokeellista ääntä ja kuvaa studiossa ja lavalla improvisaatioon ja musiikkiin perustuen. Tällä hetkellä hän työskentelee Taideyliopiston Kuvataideakatemiassa työmestarina ja opettajana.
