“Drifting Paris” Cédric Alviani (Von Taipei) Raw Snapshots 2018-2020

from Centered on Taiwan - Summer 2023

Lutetia ART-at-TAC June/July Exhibition 6

Anew tide of clandestine posters sweep across the walls framing the Parisian boulevards every day. Quickly outdated and quickly replaced, these colorful placards compete in a cacophony of exuberant slogans, singing virtues of the latest electronic gadgets, fashion brands and theatrical shows. Day after day, their voices and faces are superimposed with a thick layer of paper and glue, which swells and shrinks under the relentless pasting-ups and tearing-downs.

Washed out, soggy, warped by the sun and rain, torn and smeared by vandals, the pictures have become distorted as if seen through a prism of moving water. The fading yellows and magentas, mixed with traces of glue, form a foam and blue tint that deepens the impression of the marine landscape.

The degradation does not spare the characters whose lives are bound inside the images. Their elegance and sensuality, their joy for life, have given way to the bitterness and rage of the oppressed, to the despair of a drowning man. In this ocean of paper and glue, bodies and faces gasp for air, their drifting souls cry out to passers-by begging for help.

Uptown in the “City of Lights”, where the scent of urine often masks even the most poignant of chic perfumes, these incongruent scraps of consumerist society have taken on an element of subversion. The resilience of these paper ghosts create an echo of the innumerable homeless who, just as invisible but very much alive, lining the walls of the Parisian boulevards.

In the far reaches of Cédric Alviani’s visual universe, the worlds of Art Brut and urban poetry converge. This artist, who for two decades has divided his time between Europe and Asia, is also a familiar figure in the Taiwanese underground rock scene.