Poule!

Trapshooting, dating in its present American form from the 1920s, involves firing at moving clay disks ("pigeons") with a shotgun. The classical clay disk is orange—although there are also black, white, blue and green versions—and must not exceed 110 millimeters in diameter and 110 milligrams in weight. The shooter's standard call for the launch of a target is "Pull!", which quite a number of French and Belgian enthusiasts have interpreted as Poule ("Hen"), or sometimes "Pool". All this linguistic scattershot plus a certain fondness for my native French has led me to opt for Poule! as the title for this disparate assemblage of some seventy objects of desire.

A "cut-up" is the application to literature of techniques borrowed from other artistic disciplines.1 And if we give the concept of an exhibition the same treatment Gysin administered to writing,2 Poule! is a most definitely a kind of cut-up. Slicing at random into the Colección Jumex corpus has been the guideline for the choice of works "stuck" side by side here.

Poule! highlights no particular theme: rather it convenes a profusion of provocative, cross-fertilizing ones. Lots of black and white here, but lots of color too: smoke; iconic figures from art, music, movies, and fashion; lots of unknowns; works based on archival material; a mass of photographs and a few paintings; silkscreening; moving images; immobile and animated artifacts; drawings done in pencil, water, ink, and gouache; human ashes mixed with water; people talking while others are cutting wood; memories, true and fantasized stories, and the shadow of William Burroughs.

And then there's also nature, with its mountains, oceans, and more or less threatening skies; plus wind and spells.

No smoke without fire…

The arsonists: Francis Alÿs, Andisheh Avini, Miriam Bäckström, Dirk Bell, Jason Bereswill, Bene Bergado, Dike Blair, Iñaki Bonillas, Santiago Borja, Slater Bradley, Adrian Burns, Fernando Carabajal, Lawrence Carroll, Anne Collier, Patricia Faure, Urs Fischer, Cao Guimarães, Andreas Gursky, Daniel Guzmán, Peter Holzhauer, Dennis Hopper, Marine Hugonnier, Steven Klein, Brandon Lattu, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Adam McEwen, Jorge Méndez Blake, Oscar Muñoz, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Sebastián Rodríguez Romo, Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda, Marco Rountree Cruz, Ling Sepúlveda, Jim Shaw, Hedi Slimane, George Stoll, Yoshihiro Suda, Eduardo Terrazas, Rosemarie Trockel, Tatiana Trouvé, Francesco Vezzoli, John Waters, Hannah Wilke, Christopher Williams, Richard Wright.

The Poule! catalog will include contributions of Daniel Guzmán, franck leibovici, and François Olislaeger; as well as texts by Michel Blancsubé, Dan Graham, Guillermo Santamarina and Gilles A. Tiberghien.

Michel Blancsubé Mexico City, January 2012

Poule!

Künstler: Francis Alÿs, Andisheh Avini, Miriam Bäckström, Dirk Bell, Jason Bereswill, Bene Bergado, Dike Blair, Inaki Bonillas, Santiago Borja, Slater Bradley, Adrian Burns, Fernando Carabajal, Lawrence Carroll, Anne Collier, Patricia Faure, Urs Fischer, Cao Guimaraes, Andreas Gursky, Daniel Guzman, Peter Holzhauer, Dennis Hopper, Marine Hugonnier, Steven Klein, Brandon Lattu, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Adam McEwen, Jorge Mendez Blake, Oscar Muñoz, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Sebastian Rodriguez Romo, Miguel Rodriguez Sepulveda, Marco Rountree Cruz, Ling Sepulveda, Jim Shaw, Hedi Slimane, George Stoll, Yoshihiro Suda, Eduardo Terrazas, Rosemarie Trockel, Tatiana Trouve, Francesco Vezzoli, John Waters, Hannah Wilke, Christopher Williams, Richard Wright.