The Chubby Twins

It all starts with the search for a space to bring together artists who are or aren’t acquainted, sometimes following one another, always independent and rather evenhanded. Breaking away from the codes, fears, misrepre- sentations and networks of Art as an Institution’s territories, where sometimes creation won’t forget to pimp itself out or showboat around. A desire to exist with one another and not against one another. To find an un-space, wi- thout any link to the [art] world. Post-insulte will be in the outskirts of town, in Clichy. A space chosen because it imposes itself, is abun- dantly available and is one that we like. On the ground floor, a Leader Price and its dirt-cheap offers. At the corner, the neighbo- rhood off track betting bar with its view on loop of le Rapido lotto draw, and dreams of easy money that never come true, with a table just big enough to place your bets. Upstairs, an empty apartment, cheap hardwoods and glass cei- ling overlooking a halal kebab. A pigeon coop left to its own devices since way back, warped and rusted stained glass win- dowpanes. A dark basement, tiled walls, probably the back room of a butcher shop. A fertile plot of land—like a small island—so that the ensemble of artists may show- case a precarious and ephemeral alternative to the wave of the art world, its name doping/dropping, its numbers and no-go zones.
 
FuBu. The artist often projects themself in their dreams, a mix of pleasure, of play, self-satisfaction, and often frustrations. Imagine the perfect place, a flamboyant floor, a staggering ceiling height, a preoccupying perspective... Forms, paint, sculptures massive or on an intimate scale, pictures, films: Each envisioned scenario reflects the hope of the artist to pass on their ideas, universe, vision.
 
For what purpose and for who to see? as the unique rallying cry, without the need for anyone. Neither patron nor sponsor: For Us By Us, in the era 2017 saturated with images and actors in the know: Curators here, curators there, Instagram artists, Instagram snippets from the show, Instagram li(k)es...
 
To each their own story and their sometimes fictitious flow of ego strokes.
Out of the ordinary. Here, each artist has their own imposing writing, particular gestures, a vocabulary that doesn’t dull out, that doesn’t become its own cliché. A fierce determination to not go on forever in a formula that works. Everyone crossing paths with perseverance, the silhouette of signage, with a presence assumed in their quirks and discoveries.
 
Art is in flotation, that of the tinted and faded Japanese-inspired line of Stéphane Calais, who sees the world as a vast drawing. There’s roaming in the fringes of land and law with Antwan Horfee, whose paintings are blown up with air, bombed out, underground and radically of the people. Art is a dérive with SKKI, lone walker on the watch for the invisible details of the city, its trash, its defects, its rejects that erect a surrealist landscape of the society of consump- tion. Art evokes custom cars and street fashion in the forms and synthetic materials manipulated and distorted by Fréderic Platéus and Simone Zaccagnini.
 
Art takes up volume and plows both intimate and slightly dirty furrows in the work of the indomitable Aline Bouvy, for whom creation is wild. Painting appears to be a printing technique for Mario Picardo, boxer-painter who strikes the canvas with shapes and symbols playing bumper cars, all with the efficiency and rigor of a laborer loading up their truck. The Bells Angels point out again and again that the man who creates today must be able to mutate and offer a range of variations of man to the machine. Art is a failure, a glitch in the works of Alix Desaubliaux, whose searches get lost in virtual geographic intervals disfigured by bugs. The artist is a fictio- nal character with Ken Sortais, who is forever vagabonding between historical remains and contemporary vandalism. Paint spreads out in the spontaneous strokes of Stevie Dix, clearing the boundary between figuration and abstraction in his crusted over color blobs, between the light of color and strong lines. With Jon Pilkington the propositions of composition naturally become evident after multiple superimpositions. Mathias Schweizer splits up landscapes, first scanned then assembled and altered in a random manner, emerging into space like visual pollution. Art is a sometimes-sculptural-second skin with Nicolas Momein, between viscid puddles and exposed hairs: Art is animal.
 
Multi-directional, this project is in its third chapter 1 + 2, multiple curators and sundry participants, sometimes the same, but always new accomplices. Post-insulte proposes a project, that which co- mes after the rejections, after the refusals, after the pre-masticated and post-market, after the déjà-vu and déjà been through. The-after- the-blockbuster-ticket-of-museums-and-galleries-who-hold-the-top- spot. Culture of clicks and of cliques. Post thingamajig and neo-post thingamabob: Having fun with the jargon that hums on. Put into contact in this way, with the poster signed by the graphic designer Kaïs Dhifi and the publication of a catalog, headed by Simon Bernheim and Julien Sirjacq of Bells Angels, the works presented take their stab at affirming art as an insult, profanity, a transgression, backtalk, an attack, defacement, an outburst, a strain, blasphemy: A freedom fix that knows neither good manners nor polite standards.
 
Antwan Horfee & Hugo Vitrani