FABIENNE AUDEOUD

20.04.23–10.06.23
“ARE YOU ALONE?”

“‘ARE YOU ALONE?’”

In 1998, Peggy Phelan gave a lecture at Goldsmiths College London where I was studying, which she introduced with an old feminist‘joke’:“Two women are at a bar having a drink when a guy comes in and addresses them: “Are you alone?” She then discussed how President Clinton was asked if he was ‘alone with Monica Lewinsky’ when he did or did-not-have sex with her. In ‘Unmarked:The Politics of Performance’1 she writes:“If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture” and states that “the production and reproduction of visibility are par t of the labour of the reproduction of capitalism.”

“‘Are you Alone?’” is my first solo gallery show. I’ve never been on any market before, neither on le grand marché de la bonne meuf2 (hello Virginie Despentes) nor on the employment one. But I’d love to enter the art market. I would very much appreciate being exchanged – for a certain figure – or certain figures.
And that’s where I tell you I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum a few years ago, in my early fifties.

And that’s where I tell you I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum a few years ago, in my early fifties.

It’s only since then that I realised everything I had done as an artist was an attempt at materialising experiences, I felt were not quite normal – not in a moral sense but as not ‘conforming to a standard, usual, typical, or expected’. If in this show you experience elements of extreme loneliness, awkwardness and feeling invaded by words it is because it is what I do. Even when I don’t plan it, it is what I do.

But here’s what I would say about the exhibition as it ‘lies’ in progress in my studio:
Four cardboard models stand on large brown boxes/plinths as the centrepieces of the show.They are recycled from the 2019 retrospective project3 , where all the work I had presented during the previous twenty-five years was reproduced on a 1/15th scale.The foam-board structures that made up the fictional/enormous institution have been dis- and re-assembled into four rectangular spaces.The photocopied paintings and videos on iPads and iPhones have been removed. Only a few of the screens have been displaced onto the galler y walls, displaying non-identified beings4 breathing on some slow modular pulses.The spaces feel empty despite the presence of a few isolated objects probably left behind, such as two baroque chandeliers, one hanging from the gallery ceiling, and one diamond basketball hoop (hello David Hammons, I only realised later it is one of your iconic pieces), a camp bed (hello Julie Beker, I remember you had to create a masterpiece to pay the rent5) amongst a few other leftovers (series series series series).The walls have been torn apart, cut and re-cut.Various architectural elements have been de-glued and re-glued, displaying numerous interventions and traces of patching-ups (hello Beverly Buchanan).. Only the floors are pristine clean, thus attesting to some serious maintenance work (hello Mierle Laderman Ukeles, it would be nice if you had a major show in France).

The walls not used to rebuild the empty/desolated art spaces are displayed as flatten sculptures on the gallery walls. (Hello Fernanda Gomes, hello Win McCarty amongst many others). I personally find comfort in looking at squares that are not quite square, cuts that are not straight, crop marks that won’t go, not-quite-right angles, glue drips and stains of all sorts. Right in front of me like paintings, portraits, landscapes and other abstract rep- resentations of desires that do not always have to do with nerve endings and all the gender issues that hang from them…

Penises are painted on large canvases, as words rather than organs or themes.As ElsaVettier has it:‘You are sub- jected to and at the same time claiming literality.’ But pénis is not a speech act, not even in French, I thus shouldn’t really call in J.L. Austin’s ‘How To Do Things With Words’6 and ‘the issues of the performative versus the merely constative’. I never really understood the psychoanalytical lack of ( ), maybe because lack is such a typical market notion. Here, it is more about trying to deal with all the ‘fuck you’ and ‘fuck them’ I hear/read.What does ‘Fuck the Police’ or ‘Fuck Patriarchy’ mean? Should one ever wish unwanted sex to anyone? I do not want this threat in my mouth. And if fucking is not about fucking, what is it about then? Should anyone come at some point?

I’d rather you fucked me.