For the first time, the artists Yannick Fournié and Cyril Le Van present simultaneously their work at the gallery Géraldine Banier, and question, by their realistic works, the current social codes.
Vuitton bags, Vans sneakers, Moncler down jackets … The social markers are such an integral part of our everyday life that we do not pay any more attention to them. At least, we believe it. We adopt them to embody a fantasized identity and integrate a group of individuals to whom we feel close, while exposing it, doing so, to the criticisms of other different groups. Clichés for clichés. The “dropout” in Adidas, New Era cap screwed on his skull, the blazer and squared Hermes for the upper-class persons of Neuilly, the stereotypes are uncountable.
Yannick Fournié with his paintings, Cyril Le Van by his sculpture, these two artists borned in the beginning of the 70s, present at the gallery Géraldine Banier a strong sociological work, in connection with these questions of identity. If the first one has followed an atypical cursus, in particular by an experience within the parachute units of the army, which constituted under his own terms as an «enriching, but painful: rigidity, hierarchy, political and social violence», the second is none the less familiar with the socio-cultural disparities as he was brought up in a Parisian suburb, and by that, witnessing them from the inside, and so decomposing and illustrating them in codes through his work.
The object, used as an identity revelator, is in the center of the questioning. With the branded sneakers, scratched pants, blazoned jackets of Cyril Le Van, these items are easily recognizable, presented as in an atypical store. The poor materials which compose them parody their manufacturing, usually industrial and their luxurious appearance: the desire to possess them or to wear them, becomes here a blatant delusion, declined, multiplied, intrusive but fragile. The artist also uses the stakes in abyss - in particular using a dress with Campbell Soup’s boxes, famously used by Warhol - to emphasize a derisive consumer society which feeds itself even of criticisms emitted towards itself.
The series Incognito of Yannick Fournié confronts in a different way- but with the same idea - the visitor with codes which are strangers for him. The meaning of the masks which disguise the various characters remains opaque for the novice, even though, in this particular case it corresponds to an essential identity sign in the mexican wrestling, where every sportsman possesses his own. Here, the blue mask is the one of Blue Demon, a legend in Mexico since the 1950s. The wrestler has never removed his mask during his public fights- upto being buried with him - hiding so, forever, his real identity. On the contrary, the protagonists of the 3G series keep their face bare, in a totally free-and-easy attitude. They are all in possession of a gun in one hand, the second one occupied by a mobile phone. The communication’s tool is the equal of the weapon, the legal weapon: there is no crime without network...
Axel Sourisseau