Aline Bouvy & John Gillis:
Venusia, 2007
animated and directed by ALINE BOUVY and JOHN GILLIS
original soundtrack written and performed by JOHNSTON SHEARD/ SANDI SIROCCO
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Since 2000 Belgian artists
ALINE BOUVY and JOHN GILLIS pursue an ongoing interest in collages and forms and how they can present anthropomorphic movements. Their sculptures, drawings, and videos derive from transformations of everyday structures that they transpose into their own visual language. Using the medium of collage, they often creates surreal as well as melancholic pieces of work, reflecting cultural phenomena.
Partly influenced by the French photographer and stylist SERGE LUTENS,
Venusia (2007) is a lush collage of body parts, dismembered from their original glamorous advertisement models, floating animals, and kaleidoscopic patterns. The mere repetition of eyes, arms, heads, lips passing the screen is carnivalesque and celebrates the beauty in a generic way, yet it also suggests a commodified seriality and reproducibility, which puts a high-capitalist gloss over this artificial and easily expandable dream world.
Lured by a pearl necklace, like a fish by bait, a woman bites into it. Seduced by the desire for splendor and the Venusian promise of beauty, she incorporates the pearls, hides herself behind polished fingernails, and appears in the nude, yet masked, like FRITZ LANG
‘s robot woman.
If you don’t know them, you should have a cautious look at their stricking and inspiring work via
bouvygillis.net
