Detanico & Lain's 'Inverse Times' at Musée Zadkine

Brazilian artist duo Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, who have been collaborating since 1996 and represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale, presented the exhibition 'Inverse Times' at Musée Zadkine in Paris from April 4 to September 16, 2007. The exhibition was part of the 'Hospitalités' program in Île-de-France and was curated by Penelope Curtis and Stephen Feeke, director and deputy curator of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. The show featured three installations exploring digital media in complex ways. 'Selected Sculpture from Ossip Zadkine' projected a digitized image of Zadkine's sculpture Demeter, with black-and-white pixels creating a shimmering animation effect. The series 'Le Nom des étoiles' used a custom typeface called 'Helvetica Concentrated', derived from Helvetica, where star names like Baten Kaitos were formed by transferring ink from Helvetica characters, resulting in perfect discs symbolizing a new writing system oriented toward the cosmos. Another typeface, 'Inverse Times', adapted from Times New Roman, was used in 'Fleur Inverse', where a poem by Jacques Roubaud, 'Variations sur la canso Ar Resplan La Flors Enversa' by Raimbaud d'Orange, was displayed opposite mirrors; the inverted typeface became readable in the reflected image. A sound piece by François Sarhan accompanied the installation. The artists' critical stance toward communication media was highly effective.