Gaillard & Claude

As critical yet amused observers of the social imaginary of our time, since their partnership began in the early 2000s Gaillard & Claude have cultivated an art of absurd intrusion and poetic incidents, adopting an insolent stance in response to the narrative and normative order that infuse society. Through its meanders of nonsense and psychedelia, their art sketches a mental landscape shaped by semantic drifts, perceptive gaps and affective modulations.

A bilingual French/English catalog dedicated to the work produced by the French artist duo between 2010 and today, largely documented by a photographic report of all the pieces presented.

A critical and amused observer of the social imagination of our time, the duo of French artists Gaillard & Claude have cultivated, since their formation in the early 2000s, an art of absurd intrusion and poetic incident which would have transposed the burlesque and sound cinema from Jacques Tati to postmodern society, to reveal, behind our symptoms of "hangover", the contradictory injunctions. From plaster sculpture to polyurethane bas-relief, from marbled paper to textile printing, passing through electronic music or the staging of their own pieces, their polymorphous approach owes its coherence to the fact that its cultural referents are steeped in all in the same and unique "cultural magma" where the confusion of spaces reigns like the discordance of times. Extending the mathematical theory of sets to the field of aesthetics, Gaillard & Claude has thus become a master in the subtle art of double meaning and innuendo, of paradoxical affinities and incredible intersections, of scientific formulas and vernacular expressions. Envisaged as a first retrospective journey in Belgium since the installation of the duo in Brussels in 2008, the exhibition at MACS brings together the essential of their production through three bodies of work: Le Groupe et La Famille (2010), Orchestra ( 2015) and Baloney! (2020).

Un catalogue consacré au travail réalisé par le duo d'artistes français entre 2010 et aujourd'hui, largement documenté par un reportage photographique de l'ensemble des pièces présentées.
Observateur critique et amusé de l'imaginaire social de notre époque, le duo d'artistes français Gaillard & Claude cultive, depuis leur formation au début des années 2000, un art de l'intrusion saugrenue et de l'incident poétique qui aurait transposé le cinéma burlesque et sonore de Jacques Tati à la société postmoderne, pour en révéler, derrière nos symptômes de « gueule de bois », les injonctions contradictoires. De la sculpture en plâtre au bas-relief en polyuréthane, du papier marbré à l'impression textile, en passant par la musique électronique ou la mise en scène de leurs propres pièces, leur démarche polymorphe doit sa cohérence au fait que ses référents culturels baignent tous dans un même et unique « magma culturel » où règnent la confusion des espaces comme la discordance des temps. Élargissant la théorie mathématique des ensembles au domaine de l'esthétique, Gaillard & Claude est ainsi passé maître dans l'art subtil du double sens et du sous-entendu, des affinités paradoxales et des intersections inouïes, des formules scientifiques et des expressions vernaculaires. Envisagée comme un premier parcours rétrospectif en Belgique depuis l'installation du duo à Bruxelles en 2008, l'exposition au MACS rassemble l'essentiel de leur production à travers trois corpus d'œuvres : Le Groupe et La Famille (2010), Orchestra (2015) et Baloney ! (2020).

As critical yet amused observers of the social imaginary of our time, since their partnership began in the early 2000s Gaillard & Claude have cultivated an art of absurd intrusion and poetic incidents, adopting an insolent stance in response to the narrative and normative order that infuse society. Through its meanders of nonsense and psychedelia, their art sketches a mental landscape shaped by semantic drifts, perceptive gaps and affective modulations.

A bilingual French/English catalog dedicated to the work produced by the French artist duo between 2010 and today, largely documented by a photographic report of all the pieces presented.

A critical and amused observer of the social imagination of our time, the duo of French artists Gaillard & Claude have cultivated, since their formation in the early 2000s, an art of absurd intrusion and poetic incident which would have transposed the burlesque and sound cinema from Jacques Tati to postmodern society, to reveal, behind our symptoms of "hangover", the contradictory injunctions. From plaster sculpture to polyurethane bas-relief, from marbled paper to textile printing, passing through electronic music or the staging of their own pieces, their polymorphous approach owes its coherence to the fact that its cultural referents are steeped in all in the same and unique "cultural magma" where the confusion of spaces reigns like the discordance of times. Extending the mathematical theory of sets to the field of aesthetics, Gaillard & Claude has thus become a master in the subtle art of double meaning and innuendo, of paradoxical affinities and incredible intersections, of scientific formulas and vernacular expressions. Envisaged as a first retrospective journey in Belgium since the installation of the duo in Brussels in 2008, the exhibition at MACS brings together the essential of their production through three bodies of work: Le Groupe et La Famille (2010), Orchestra ( 2015) and Baloney! (2020).