Les Bains-Douches, Alençon

The generosity of Gaillard & Claude lies in the fact that their art offers us an experience that, while rooted in carefully selected social and aesthetic codes, is driven by a genuine commitment from free individuals. It is not merely about evoking or even twisting their heterogeneous sources—craftsmanship, psychedelia, mass economy, rave parties, branding, etc.—nor about embodying them in gestures, forms, or objects, however precise these may be. Rather, it is about triggering a relationship between these references and their various materializations (sculpture, music, sound, installation, video, radio…) and our own background, which grows through a semantic, sensory, and jubilant play. In this shared presence, we don’t come away with just another image in our minds, but with an expanded way of seeing things—a broadened vision of the world.

It is this enlightened and stimulating generosity that defines the artists’ work, much more than the ultra-legible pop icons that characterized their early practice and which they seem to be gradually shedding. Indeed, the group of sculptures they will install at Les Bains-Douches, from which the instrument shown in the Monkey Puzzle / Le désespoir des singes edition (below) is taken, appears to enjoy more autonomy while remaining faithful to their universe. Between sexual organs and gourds, native art and virtual 3D, abstraction and anthropomorphism, their wind instruments play with both emptiness and meaning, intellect and sensuality. And in their controlled abandon, their forms defy gravity as much as they toy with balance—a notion dear to the artists.