July 25, 2020 from 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Plexus Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Johan Parent. Self lavage will be featured in Vitrine, an ongoing screening series of moving image artworks.

Self lavage is a short film which shows the putting into service, vacuous, the night, of an automobile car wash point. The video lasts the time of the temporal process of the machine; wiever contemplate in a performance. The karcher starts in rhythm, as a dance show. It refer to the first machinist creations of the beginning of the 20th century, as the movie « The mechanical Ballet » of Fernand Léger (1924). This movie shows a fascination, for the manufactured objects and for the ideal harmony between the man and the machine. But here the ballet is made without the man, the machine conquered its autonomy, up to the absurd. This vision commonplace of the work of machines, becomes at night, disturbing and wild, in a ‘‘ urban scene’’ which we do not control. In this video, the cinematographic universe and the performative dimension are associated.

Johan Parent’s multiform work shows the change in the status of objects in our society. He examines them by disassembling their functionality and their dependence on human presence, sometimes becoming absurd, counter-productive machines. The artist also plays on the saturation or scrambling of our environments and creates self-sufficient devices that reveal modern symptoms (anxiety, failure, etc.). The works shown at La Serre consist of visual and sound installations featuring movement (motorised mirrors, industrial fans…), with the presence of urban components.