Phung-Tien Phan et Niklas Taleb, "Modernist"
Living together and currently working in Essen, Germany, this exhibition is an opportunity to engage in a dialogue between their two practices for the first time. In their work, they are interested in the design of domestic space, the staging of affects and dress codes, different manifestations of social representation that allow them to question the artificial nature of European heterosexual and bourgeois relationships.
As a counterweight to the imposing architecture of the museum building, the two artists have imagined an installation of paper walls that divides the space and reproduces the dimensions of the different rooms that make up an apartment. This installation is also the setting for a set of sculptures by Phung-Tien Phan and photographs by Niklas Taleb. Together, they propose a stroll between the interior and intimate space of the apartment and the exterior space of the street.
The heterogeneous association of photographs of car hoods, sculptures with the appearance of an Ikea kitchenette and dimmed lights participate in the construction of a universe that is both familiar in its codes but strange in its suspension: an extraordinary standardization.