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PULP - I. A soft, shapeless, moist, mass of matter. II. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough unfinished paper - In this two perhaps three part two-person exhibition by Mathieu Malouf and Nicolas Ceccaldi, one enters the galleries through a large number of paintings inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction. The cult cinematographical object serves as a point of departure for a new bodies of works produced in Paris - cinephile city par excellence - by both artists and that extends the realm of pulp genre to the already over saturated field of painting. Through its title and poster, the Tarantino movie initially packaged itself with nostalgia as a pastiche of an outmoded genre. What we have here is a film buff show that operates a similar kind of leap - it includes a trench coat that might have belonged to Uma Thurman’s character - dangerously leaning towards poster shop art. By portraying the film’s main characters - Mia Wallace, Vincent Vega, and Jules Winnfield - in manners furthermore mixing several pedigrees of painting styles or pictorial genres, the protagonists of this Hollywood production get upgraded to muses and models, in every meaning of the term. And why not, the script and aesthetics of Pulp Fiction, the relational dialectics between the characters and the violence imbedded provide a very valid, timeless, reflection or allegory on our revengeful world. The Pulp Fiction text paintings presented in one of the exhibition spaces testify for that too - in a commodified Richard Prince like, translation. Thus perhaps this is what this pulp show ultimately comes to embody: painting as the ultimate, most blatant form of commodification. But how cool is it to be aware and reflect on all this, while looking at « short-circuit-paintings »/ portraits of a beatified Mia Wallace, or indulging in second hand foot fetishism… There’s perhaps not much else left to do.
Nicolas Ceccaldi, Mathieu Malouf, Druÿdrye, 15 April – 28 May 2016
PULP - I. A soft, shapeless, moist, mass of matter. II. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough unfinished paper - In this two perhaps three part two-person exhibition by Mathieu Malouf and Nicolas Ceccaldi, one enters the galleries through a large number of paintings inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s movie Pulp Fiction. The cult cinematographical object serves as a point of departure for a new bodies of works produced in Paris - cinephile city par excellence - by both artists and that extends the realm of pulp genre to the already over saturated field of painting. Through its title and poster, the Tarantino movie initially packaged itself with nostalgia as a pastiche of an outmoded genre. What we have here is a film buff show that operates a similar kind of leap - it includes a trench coat that might have belonged to Uma Thurman’s character - dangerously leaning towards poster shop art. By portraying the film’s main characters - Mia Wallace, Vincent Vega, and Jules Winnfield - in manners furthermore mixing several pedigrees of painting styles or pictorial genres, the protagonists of this Hollywood production get upgraded to muses and models, in every meaning of the term. And why not, the script and aesthetics of Pulp Fiction, the relational dialectics between the characters and the violence imbedded provide a very valid, timeless, reflection or allegory on our revengeful world. The Pulp Fiction text paintings presented in one of the exhibition spaces testify for that too - in a commodified Richard Prince like, translation. Thus perhaps this is what this pulp show ultimately comes to embody: painting as the ultimate, most blatant form of commodification. But how cool is it to be aware and reflect on all this, while looking at « short-circuit-paintings »/ portraits of a beatified Mia Wallace, or indulging in second hand foot fetishism… There’s perhaps not much else left to do.