in these slightly creepy objects i am able to find an equilibrium     of things
it’s all very basic
for white i need black for sad i need joy in ugly i find beautiful
is it as simple as that?              maybe it is as simple as that

& if by face you mean
that which is subject
to frostbite, vinegar, kerosene, sugar

& if by teeth you mean
those who are never
alone & always
aware*

a poem i read   on my girlfriend’s couch
i’ve looked for a pride   i have found in those teeth
folding inwards and showing oneself   with pride
between the two that’s where the object lies

this is where i want to live
this is where i want for us to live
and
how could i thank the gallery enough for letting me make these things live here    just for a while

i ask myself
an artist friend said to me
“when i see the mask i think    either he’s laughing at us
or maybe is he     laughing with us?”
a blind surface      a material
in making              i discover
what i find in the next cast is that
in each the smile is new

i don’t write
i write like   i move things
i take internet words and these are the vital source of my objects
i like marcel broodthaers
i like matter
and would i dare write this                 i too would like to dance
like the singer of the stone roses my shoulders thrown backwards like some kind of emotional algae
aquatic
i want to make that dance become mine without even having to move
this softness of movement
like slipping and curling up and dancing with the dimly-lit street post in a city’s night

and what’s against us calls for us to say
and a surface calls for us to write
an invitation for corruption
did i forget to say?
my son Paul is rather pissed off i took his doll house and put it upside down in a piece for piraeus
one day maybe he’ll get it          or not (and does it matter but)
upside down changes the established order of things

i’m really trying to write this somewhere       but i can’t seem to fit it anywhere
i’d like to say
that it’s when i’m asleep that i am awake    the most
whichever thing is switched off is           the most living of things

if something took you here you may too have some space for
an attention to
particular things

and what i really wanted to say is
thank you
for that attention

David Douard

*lo-fi frags in-progress, frances kruk, veer 005 2015

//

To enter David Douard’s work, is to pass through a threshold. It is as if you walk inside a mirror and look at the present from an inverted perspective. The structures that make up networked hyper-realities of the everyday turn inoperative and disintegrate. The often-unnoticeable elements that maintain these structures attain presence, autonomy and form new constellations. What is left is a chaotic hybrid environment where materiality and immateriality have collapsed onto one another, and where differing forms of language flow freely.

For his second exhibition at Rodeo, O’ thee lil’, David pursues a series of works initiated in his solo show at Paris’ Frac Île-de-France in September 2020.

Here again, materials such as aluminium and bronze no longer exist in support of systems of language, but rather become language themselves. Internet sourced texts gain physicality, found and made objects take on a new presence. Their once fixed meanings turn fluid, morphing continually, becoming viral.

In Piraeus and London, we perceive the fossilisation of digital flux and feel a continuous tension in objects where hybrid elements hold onto each other, imbricated in a repetition of symbols evoking flow and transmission of language. There is a sense of togetherness, of proximity and distance, of a collective self in which individual bodies can exist anonymously.

David Douard is fascinated with anonymous movements, an interest which he has crystallised in the Joker's mask. To him, they recall a political commitment, the way James Ensor's paintings would. One could say what he seeks to achieve is to make a digital presence physical, or material, through the objects he creates.

A language binds these two shows: one of the appropriation of restraining spaces, of the corruption of sleek surfaces, present both in the digital and physical worlds which David melts together in a unique preoccupation.

Text by Panos Fourtoulakis