Bernard Quesniaux's Playful Subversion at Centre d'art contemporain, Cajarc

Bernard Quesniaux's exhibition at the Centre d'art contemporain in Cajarc, running from October 9 to December 23, 2011, presents a playful deconstruction of artistic categories through drawings, paintings, sculptures, and two video installations. The artist adopts a burlesque identity, with works titled "Tableau utilitaire," "Tableau auto-encadré," and "La Question du socle." A series of paintings made with black lines of expanding foam are labeled "Tableau de 3," "Tableau de 1," "Tableau de 8," etc., exaggerating the thickness of paint as a humorous response to painterly ambition. Quesniaux revitalizes clichés of the genre—figure/ground, illusion/reality, canvas/wall—through wit. The exhibition features his first video works: "Département des vélos," a homage to Marcel Broodthaers, strings together phrases with absurd humor akin to floating objects. A highlight is a painting of colored spots illuminated by a projection of red balls circling the canvas, integrating moving image convincingly into his eccentric oeuvre. Laurent Buffet notes the artist is far less clumsy than he pretends.