Laure Roynette Gallery is pleased to invited you to the opening of the exhibition Ask the dust with
Mathieu Weiler from March 16th to 30th April 2017.
« Ask the dust » is based on these phrase by Yves Klein :
"Whereas I sculpted fire and water and fire and water, I have drawn paintings". Yves Klein, The Manifesto of the Hotel Chelsea, 1961.
History of Art’s series is a project consisting of a video where Ernst H. Gombrich's History of Art is consumed and a set of 9 drawings showing the traces of the burning of the works presented in the book.
In the myth of Prometheus, Prometheus gives fire to man, a symbol of knowledge. The book is also an object of knowledge. In his encounter with fire there is a kind of tautology, a clash between two pieces of knowledge to produce a new one.
The action to give fire to man may also be perceived as an act of rebellion in relation to the Gods of Olympus. Prometheus will also be punished by the gods for having given the sacred fire to man.
Burning a book is a taboo act and it can be likened as a iconoclastic gesture , but what matters to Mathieu Weiler is more about the recording of the imprint of fire, modification, mutation, of the desire to tap into the force of nature to carry out an act of transformation and recreation.