French Exit by CONCORDE - Exhibitions

Try to picture the very definition of coziness, think a soft throw on a sofa, the flicking warmth of candlelight nearby. Ok well. Concorde’s take on the concept is akin to an act of exorcism. The couch has been buried under a modular, shape-shifting, implacable creation. The Blanknets, tapestries of stress balls orderly stuffed inside industrial nets, seem to have been made to disabuse the viewer of any sense of usefulness associated with their appearance. Which is not to say they aren’t functional, or that they don’t make sense. In fact, they are highly versatile objects of desire. Like all of Concorde’s production, they have a clear origin story, precise sources of inspiration, but speak the language of oracles. They just voice their own sense.

The collaborative practice of Concorde scorns the enduring iconicity of modernist product design, the clean lines and the functional, minimalist shapes; in opposition, their pieces embrace the cryptic and the technical, combining readymade parts and custom production with references that span from medieval craftsmanship to contemporary wellness. Fusing irony and exactness, playfulness and savagery, absurdism and practicality, the mixed-use artifacts presented for French Exit are tools for a new engagement.

Upstairs, Concorde negotiate the context of a contemporary art gallery, vis à vis existing and newly commissioned works by Michaela Eichwald, Anna Franceschini, John Miller, Daniele Milvio, Emily Sundblad, Peter Wächtler and Bruno Zhu. Like any exhibition, the diverse works chosen for this one required a framing, an installation.

It’s tricky. Concorde is not attuned to the traditional museological codes of a tasteful, custom display: elements made to measure, at the service of the exhibition architecture and of an impression of curated cohesion. The bolted steel shelves and cabinets-turned-plinths, irreverently titled Panoramas and Bodyguards, are nothing of the sort. But they thrive in the company of others and they deliver on the challenge.

Stefano Cernuschi