Ellen de Bruijne

Florian & Michael Quistrebert

07 Apr - 19 May 2012

© Florian & Michael Quistrebert
Amnesic cisenmA , (detail), 3 channel video installation, 2011 (Photo:Stefan Lux)
FLORIAN & MICHAEL QUISTREBERT
Amnesic cisenmA
7 April - 19 May 2012

Amnesic cisenmA is an exhibition based on a video installation with the same title. The mirroring words in the title reflect the recurrence of symmetry in Florian & Michael Quistrebert‘s work. The installation consists of three videos, each showing a basic shape adapted to the width and height of the screen on which it is displayed.

We do work with pure materials; the pure things we have in our flat get transformed into something else. It’s actually all very low-tech. We like to join low and high. Low culture, high culture; low materials, high materials. The results are like collages that play with references and result in a kind of transcendence.*

The artists use basic techniques such as montage, collage, fragmentation, and sequencing for constructing their work. Mainly based on painting and video, they work within a formal language using basic geometric shapes, such as circles, squares and rectangles. In doing so, Florian & Michael Quistrebert often use references to the aesthetics of modernism in their work.

While they worked with symbols of occultism in previous works, they try to eliminate figurative elements in their more recent work; When we were using symbols of the occult in previous videos or even in our paintings, we were clashing the transcendence or progressive moments of modernism with the occult, which possesses hidden, other knowledge. We were kind of playing with “rolled-up” idea of Progressivism. *

In this exhibition, the relation between the work and the viewer is of crucial importance. Because initially there is no clear meaning, but only the vagueness of the work, the viewer is dependent on one’s own context, background and memory to give meaning to the images.

Florian & Michael Quistrebert (FR, 1982 &1976) studied at Ecoles des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and were residents at Triangle Studio in New York. Their work has recently been shown in the Marrakech Biennale, Galerie Stadtpark, (AUS), Harris Lieberman (NY), le Nouveau Festival – Centre Pompidou Paris and PSM Gallery, Berlin. Currently Florian & Michael Quistrebert are residents at the Rijksakademie.
 

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