Frédéric Pradeau “Half Barbarous/Half Civilized”

7 October 2005  – 30 January 2006

PRESS RELEASE

Fred Pradeau transforms coca cola into alcohol, translates atheistic Marquis de Sade’s texts from French to Arab, organizes kick boxing fights in a contemporary art gallery, assembles IKEA forniture blindfolded, makes threads out of dust so as to make a dust carpet.

So Pradeau uses cultural references (coca cola, IKEA, contemporary art…) and human actions (to weave, to box, to distillate) which are completely contradictory. The works of art resulting from this process look like a play of word, an object semantically structured by the “illegal” link of different elements.

This erroneous link makes of each work a suspect object. More than an elegant paradox, these works are really working: it is possible to make alcohol out of coca cola, to translate Sade in Arab. The world is rectified (like alcohol is rectified) without political tantrum, but by a purely domestic and ancient operation. Fred Pradeau cultivates error and paradox, he troubles our opinions so as to create ethical and subversive objects, socio-logical objects with a socio-political obviousness.

Pradeau makes his own, and analyses, elements out of the real world, he then pull norms out of them. He links these elements in a contradictory way, and produces half barbarous/half civilised objects. To express that harmony is not to avoid conflicts.