Zoom
Pickpocket
2015
JULIEN PREVIEUX
Sculpture
250 x 150 x 150
The recordings of gestures and movements as industry,commerce, police or military have developed since the late 19th century; spreada relative aesthetics of formal research of artistic modernity. Playing thisclose, Julien Prévieux transforms these recordings, inspired originally byproductivity objectives, profitability or monitoring in pure forms. Here, themovement of a pickpocket gives birth to an authentic brushed aluminum abstractsculpture, offering to the contemplation of a disinterested look. Pickpocket inits way, Prévieux steals shapes to remove them from their original purposes.
Julien Prévieux was Marcel Duchamp Prize Laureate in 2014;his work was exhibited at the Pompidou Centre in 2015.
Born in Grenoble, works in Paris.
work, management, economics, politics, control systems, state-of-the-arttechnologies and the culture industry are the many ‘worlds’ that Julien Prévieux’sactivities involve. As in the Lettres de non-motivation (Letters of Non-Appli-cation) that he has been sending out to employers regularly since 2004 – inwhich he responds to newspaper advertisements and details his reasons for notapplying for the jobs in question – his work often appropriates the vocabulary,mechanisms and modus operandi of the sectors by which it is informed, thebetter to highlight their dogmas, excesses and, when all is said and done,their vacuousness. By shrewdly adopting the stance of an individual facingwhole swathes of society that are, in many respects, dehumanised, Prévieuxdevelops a strategy of counterproductivity, or what the philosopher Elie Duringcalled, in a recent essay about the artist’s praxis, ‘counter-employment’.
Christophe Gallois, curator of the Mudam, Luxembourg
Artworks of
JULIEN PREVIEUX
Visit the Collection
Book a visit
The visit of the Collection is open to you! Come alone, in a group or on a school outing !
Reservation is mandatory in order to offer you a guided tour, at La Défense or by videoconference.
