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mountaincutters
A hybrid identity, the duo mountaincutters mainly practices in-situ sculpture, radically contaminating the space of the places where he/she exhibits. Echoing this troubled identity is an aesthetic uncertainty, which favours transitory situations and unfinished forms for a priori fortuitous compositions, with a wild beauty.

Corrupted materials and soiled objects, dust and rust invading surfaces and floors, broken concrete, coarse ceramics, water in a continuous circuit, mountaincutters' installations are traces of improbable activities, suspended between construction and destruction, architecture and archaeology, sometimes resembling an abandoned building site.

A raw character, not to say brutal, whose "formlessness" raises a share of doubt. Arranged (or rather disturbed) like a carpet under the dust. This manifest aridity, a chaotic arte povera tendency, does not mask the rigour and precision of discreetly theatrical compositions, which always imply an activity "en creux". In fact, everything here resonates with an absent body, of which the sculptures presented are prostheses, rudimentary and insufficient appendages frozen in a functional logic whose purpose escapes us.

And if it were a theatre scene, it would be that of tragedy, or more precisely of its resurgence in the industrial era, minus the fever, the industrial age, but with the distancing. In fact, mountaincutters' sculptural practice has something literary about it. It is accompanied by a parallel work of writing, a raw poetry written in the first person, which opens an organic counterpart to the material structures, between programme and potential commentary on what might happen in the space. Sometimes it is the presence of images that initiates the beginnings of a narrative. From then on, it is an unfathomable mystery that emerges from this "work", which is understood here in the double etymological sense of work and opera, i.e. linked to the pain, to the modification of bodies, but also to the enigma of creation.

Guillaume Désanges

The duo mountaincutters (1990, Marseille) graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Arts et de Design Marseille Méditerranée. Their work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions in Belgium, France and internationally. In 2021, their work was the subject of an exhibition at La Verrière-Fondation d'entreprise Hermès curated by Guillaume Désanges. In 2023, a solo exhibition was dedicated to them at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Works

Incomplete Venus (Vénus Impudique) - Detail
mountaincutters
Incomplete Venus (Vénus Impudique)
mountaincutters
Incomplete Venus (Willendörf) - Detail
mountaincutters
Heures teintées (myéline)
mountaincutters
programme poétique
mountaincutters

Gallery exhibitions

Exhibitions

Morphologies souterraines
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (France)
2023
mais, la présence aux mondes
Horst Arts & Music Festival (Belgium)
2022
Ctrl c respiration
Centre d'Art Neuchatel (Swizterland)
2022
Les indices de la respiration primitive
La Verrière - Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès, Brussels (Belgium)
2021
Anatomie d’un corps absent
Creux de l'enfer, Thiers (France)
2019
Spolia
Le Grand Café - centre d'art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire (France)
2018
Incomplete Venuses, detours and functions
Middelheim Museum, Antwerp (Belgium)
2024

Projects

Absences, mues et macules
Ignasi Aballí, Léa Belooussovitch, Marc Buchy, Lieven De Boeck, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Ellen Harvey, Rinko Kawauchi, Nicolás Lamas, Benoît Maire, mountaincutters, Cornelia Parker, Claudio Parmiggiani, Benoit Platéus, Jorge Méndez Blake, Christopher Orr, Evariste Richer, Solène Rigou, José María Sicilia, Namsal Siedlecki, Thu Van Tran, Chaim van Luit, Xie Lei