Antoine Donzeaud, Mitch, Ike & Irene

Mitch, Ike & Irene, 2019
Exo Exo, Paris

Antoine Donzeaud, Broken Windows (ike), 2019
Wood, MDF, glass, spray paint
Dimensions variable
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Antoine Donzeaud, Broken Windows (irene), 2019
Wood, MDF, glass, spray paint
Dimensions variable
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Antoine Donzeaud, Broken Windows (mitch), 2019
Wood, MDF, glass, spray paint
Dimensions variable
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Antoine Donzeaud, Broken Windows (mitch), 2019
Wood, MDF, glass, spray paint
Dimensions variable
Inquire

The work of Antoine Donzeaud acts by propagation. It is related to architecture through the verticality of its formats, through its reference to the frame, through the structure of construction and the horizontality of displacement, of walking, of wandering. In its form, minimalism meets the urban footprint of advertising and graffiti. This relationship to architecture is vast, inspired by the photographic series of abandoned houses by John Divola and the gigantic cuttings of Gordon Matta-Clark. It is also contradictory because it is bound as much to the building as to its deconstruction. But above all it is intimate, it is born of an obsession, a fascination of the artist for a meta-language digital and urban, a desire to tell the stories of those who live there.

This is the story of a storm that makes buildings stagger without ever making them fall. It is the story of skeletal structures, flickering but standing, damaged but still functional, broken glass, exploded windows, a whistling and deadly wind. It is also the story of a place, a refuge that welcomes and protects this fragile urban archeology, supports it, takes care of it. Mitch, Mike and Irene look as much in danger as they inspire danger. They are precarious, salient.

It is the story of an individual, the artist, who becomes a member of a community, creates a group, befriends. Collaborations that erect a territory, forge it. This is the story of a house, ours. Of a grammar, ours. The story of a hurricane that breaks the reverberant surface of the screens to allow us to look through at us, to look through ourselves. It is the poetry of the names of the winds which bear almost the names of gods and which fall down in a more or less hot whirlwind, much like old friends. Mitch, Mike, Irene, like an encounter that makes the next step possible, hanging out together, exchanging ideas together, beating themselves up together, producing together, outdoing each other. A wall of fragments of speeches about us.

– Elisa Rigoulet