Stalactites (Few More Mistakes). Round Bar of Wood (Portrait of Gilbert & George)

2005 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

Saâdane Afif

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In this work, Saâdane Afif quotes André Cadere’s round wooden batons using the copy share and remix principles. Cadere’s sculptures, batons constituted with a mathematical chain of painted wood segments containing one error in the succession of colors, can be presented according to any possible configuration (on the wall, floor, hung or not). In the catalogue documenting the project, Power chords, there is a facsimile (another type of quotation) of one of Cadere’s conferences: “Présentation d’un travail, utilisation d’un travail” (presentation of a work, use of a work). The batons appear in different works by Afif like tools of an essential vocabulary: with nuances of black (Black spirit, 2004), of white (Ghost, 2005), translated into sound (Power chords, 2005) or light (Untitled 1971/2003-B 0230 1004 =30= =22×23=, 2003). Saâdane Afif questions the generative capacity of error as the title suggests: A few more mistakes. He toys with some of the defining parameters of Cadere’s batons (nuances of grey, presentation as stalactites) in order to disrupt them. The title suggests that the work is in fact a portrait. Gilbert & George are two artists who perform and make photomontages about the concept of a couple. Afif pays homage to them via the minimal index of wooden batons as a reference to their notion of ‘living sculptures’.

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Saâdane Afif practices the quote: “I belong to a generation of artists who {…} discuss art as a form of language, with which you play upon, you deform, you transform, without focusing on the object as it was before.” Such strategies of re-appropriation insert themselves inside a context of idea circulation, as a form of remixing and remaking. In the work “Pirates Who’s Who,” tactics of assemblage are recognizable on all levels. The artist makes use of an eccentric shelf by designer Ron Arad, displaying dripping paint on the wall while the shelf itself holds a collection of books on piracy, compiled together by the owner of the work. “Power chords” (2005), perhaps the most ambitious project by the artist to date, is both a work for publication and several exhibitions. The installation depicts automatic electric guitars, playing scores orchestrated by a computer program. The chords are defined by color sequences derived from André Cadere’s wooden segments. Yet with Afif’s displacement, the artist hints to the color and rhythmic sound dimensions vis-à-vis Cadere, inside a genre of synesthesia. In an age of numerical technology, Cadere’s rhythmic system echoes in a particular manner together with the processes of digitization. Afif suggests a principle of encoding the world underlying the real, or rhythmic language before the Tower of Babel. Saâdane Afif was born in 1970 in Vendome, France. He lives and works in Paris and Berlin.

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Colors:

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• baton.n.01
• language.n.01
• couple.n.01
• portrayal.n.01
• sequence.n.01
• rhythm.n.01
• french contemporary artists