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The Cultural Revolution had its Quotations
from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Now we have the Quotations for
President Sarkozy: a montage of pictoral and textual quotes which
serve as mirror and counterpoint, not so much for the organised instruction
of each individual (be it pro or ad hominem), but
to support the presidency as an institution; not in the mundane realm
of adding glitter and sheen, but in the realm of subjectivity, an
axiomatic, institutional, melancholic, theatrical order, that very
realm which is the result of our most recent exercise in universal
suffrage and of the gambit of free-market democracy, which has summoned
him into office. His own Little Red Book.
The picture-quotes produced by Juan
Pérez Agirregoikoa based on images published in
the press, present the President alone, free from parasitical entourage
– an art of portraiture which constitutes both a revival
of socialist realism and opens the doors to a very contemporary era
of “Kärcher painting”. The textual quotes, extracted
from contemporary works for the most part, have been chosen by Gilles
Grelet according to one prerequisite: that the montage
of text and images leads to an engagement with ‘direct theory’
– a raw theory, a pure theory, theory without theoretics. In
honour of Nicolas S. as well as for Helmsman Sarkozy.
The man we’ve got. The one we deserve, according to
the ballot box.
see an extract |
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