A Handful of Dust

Young Creators Exhibitions
Curated by David Campany
October 18, 2015 - January 31, 2016
  • Élevage de poussière, Man Ray et Marcel Duchamp, 1920, Courtesy Galerie Françoise Paviot 

     ADAGP, Paris, 2015

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Après une tempête de poussière, une femme écrivant dans la poussière, Kansas City, 1935, Photo de presse.

    Photographe inconnu

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Tempête de poussière au Kansas, terrain stérile,1935. Photographie de presse.

    Photographe inconnu

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Une empreinte se révèle quand on la saupoudre d’un mélange special. November 7, 1923. Photo de presse.

    Photographe inconnu

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Robert Burley, Demolition of Buildings 64 and 69, Kodak Park, Rochester, New York, 2007

    Courtesy de l’artiste et du Musée Nicéphore Niépce, France

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Laure Albin Guillot, Plate II, Brazilin, album Micrographie Décorative, 1931

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • Double page extraite du livre Fait: Koweit 1991, Éditions Hazan, 1992

    Sophie Ristelhueber

  • Martin Argyroglo

  • John Divola, Vandalism, 1973 - 1974, Courtesy of Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, California

This exhibition is a speculative history of the last century, taking dust as its motif.

This in an exhibition about the life and afterlife of a photograph made in 1920 by Man Ray. Or was it by Marcel Duchamp ? Or perhaps by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp ? The photograph is humble yet enigmatic. It is a document. It is an artwork. It is a document of an artwork. It is realist and abstract. It is a still life and a landscape, a forensic image and a performance.

It is a photograph of dust on the surface of a sheet of glass in Duchamp's New-York studio. This glass would later become Duchamp's great work The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass) 1915-1923.

When it was first published, in October 1922, it was captioned "View from an aeroplane". That same month, T.S. Eliot published the great poem of the modern era, The Waste Land, which contains the line "I will show you fear in a handful of dust".

Between the World Wars, the photograph lived in avant-garde journals, each time presented a little differently.

This was the period in which artists were exploring new angles, new relations of image to language, and the uncertain terrain between the photograph as document and artwork.

In 1964, the photograph was formally titled Dust Breeding, and signed by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. From the it began to haunt contemporary culture. Conceptual artists of the 1960s and 70s were fascinated by its implications. It has often appeared in debates about photography's status as indedex or trace, in exhibitions about abstraction and artists use of impoverished materials, and even in discussions of landscape imagery.

What if that strange photograph, taken so long ago, really does signal the dawn of the modern age, with all its complications ? Can a history be assembled from the perspective of dust ?

 

‘And I will show you something different from either  
Your shadow at morning striding behind you  
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’ T.S. Eliot

From this beginning the exhibition takes in aerial photography, forensic photography, abstractions of landscapes, ruins, postcards and press photos of the American dust storms, artists’ videos, film clips, documentary photography and site specific works, featuring artists like Man Ray, John Divola, Sophie Ristelhueber, Walker Evans, Mona Kuhn, Aaron Siskind, Gerhard Richter, Xavier Ribas, Nick Waplington, Eva Stenram, Georges Bataille, Jeff Wall, among others. »
-David Campany

 

Artists in the exhibition

William Allen et Bruce Nauman
Laure Albin Guillot
Georges Bataille
Jacques-André Boiffard
Brassaï
Robert Burley
John Divola
Marcel Duchamp
Walker Evans
Robert Filliou
Charles Henri Ford
John Gerrard
David Gould
Mona Kuhn
Robert Lebel
Rut Blees Luxembourg
Jeff Mermelstein
Louise Oates
Kirk Palmer
Man Ray
Alain Resnais
Gerhard Richter
Sophie Ristelhueber
Edward Ruscha
Aaron Siskind
Frederick Sommer
Eva Stenram
Shomei Tomatsu
Giorgio Sommer
Nick Waplington
Jeff Wall
Edward Weston
Wols
Tereza Zelenkova

To go along with the exhibition, a book is co-published by MACK and LE BAL.

The exhibition takes place as part of LE BAL's fifth anniversary.

In the Press

" An image can provide a touchstone in the memory, like a line from a poem or a flashback "

Share

Related

Images dusts

Film cycle around the exhibition A Handful of Dust

November 10, 2015 - January 12, 2016

Talk with David Campany and Diane Dufour

Saturday October 17, 2015 - 12 PM

Screening / performance and discussion

With Katja Stuke, Oliver Sieber and Karin Krijgsman

Thursday October 22, 2015 - 8 PM

Concert by Filipe Felizardo and Dana Valser

Saturday November 21, 2015 - 8 PM

Conférence de choses – Episode 8

Performance by François Gremaud, 2B Company

Thursday November 26, 2015 - 8 PM

Concept of nothing

Encounter with Bernard Marcadé

Thursday December 10, 2015 - 8 PM

Dust in the Cinema

Encounter and screenings with Vincent Gérard

Thursday January 7, 2016 - 8 PM

Concert by Kaumwald

Thursday January 14, 2016 - 8 PM

Rewritten

Conversation between Jean-Marie Donat, Jacinto Lageira and Klaus Peter Speidel

Thursday 3 December 2015 at 8PM

A HANDFUL OF DUST

From the Cosmic to the Domestic

Go further