Aurélien Porte / A salutary infraction of the ideology of good taste For those who might not understand the amazing diversity of Aurélien Porte’s production, it’s necessary to remember this contemporary definition of the concept of gender proposed by Judith Butler: “[…] an open assemblage that permits of multiple convergences and divergences without obedience to a normative telos of definitional closure”.2 The practice of this interdisciplinary plastician operates in this very sense, counter to the principle of unity that the notion of gender ordinarily presupposes, that is to say counter to the principle of discipline in art. The process is crystal-clear: Aurélien Porte does not cease presenting discursive propositions, as much in organizing completely disparate works together as he sometimes does inside a single piece. Like in this catalogue, where grouped together there are a panel of gestural abstraction, large format “art and language” paintings, and the small illustrative canvases with cartoon-like depictions of animals also emphasized with lines, dashed in on grounds marbled with disordered brushstrokes – which are themselves evocative of a conceptual act of recuperation. A poor image of Archimedes, the owl belonging to Disney’s Merlin, is seen in tacky salmon-pink, orange and yellow on a background barred with touches that could have been a painting in itself. Abstraction, figuration. Well done, poorly done. Noble or popular culture. Applied Arts and those others, called Fine. It’s all there, seen in the impromptu rapprochements that are themselves a salutary infraction of the ideology of good taste, and we know what the latter requires in terms of discrimination and inertia. It’s all there, folded together, to express the multiple nature of this new genre whose purpose is to bring down the old-fashioned sterile hierarchies. And it is surprising, as the graphical sign of the owl – a symbol of the soft power with which an entire, strongly contested culture industry imposes its hegemony – seemingly goes hand-in-hand with the work of “fine arts” behind, as though the arrangement of these lines was but one possibility among all the others that emerge from the underlying colours. This particular one is neither better nor worse than the others since what is at stake is precisely the deconstruction of the cliché represented by this scale of values in subjects and practices. The title of the work is thus Oh Owl, All Low – everything is low so as to better confirm this fall in values. Aurélien Porte plays with a certain conception of form or medium as though they were so many monads. That’s why in his practice identity is never achieved through purification. 2- Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity (New York, London: Routledge, 1990).
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