“When the sick rule the world, roses, gardenias, freesias, and other fragrant flowers will no longer be grown. On Valentine's Day the sick will give one another dahlias and daisies to say I Love You. [...] When two sick bodies come together their desperate hearts open, it is lovely to watch them, the thin iridescent haze of sickness flowing across their skin, when two sick bodies fuck their hazy genitals sparkle and frizzle.”
Dodie Bellamy, When the Sick Rule the World (2015)
Konrad Fischer Galerie is delighted to present the first comprehensive solo exhibition by David Douard with the gallery.
The title of the exhibition seems to come from an occult treatise, it invokes scintillating interiorities. There's something unintelligible in this sequence of irregularly-formatted letters, which string together almost arbitrarily like pearls on a thread. Finding an expressive mode that keeps the inherent obscurity of the meaning of words, therefore allowing a warm and open communication, requires a balance that Douard trains himself to maintain.
The exhibition gathers his equivocal language, which he builds from a network of things with flexible physical and semantic properties. Industrial materials, domestic and public furniture, objects of sensory stimulation for humans and other animals, as well as images and poems collected from blogs all coalesce here. Vertebra by vertebra, these elements are fit together in his sculptures, paintings, and collages.
David Douard was born 1983 in Perpignan, France. He lives and works in Aubervilliers, France.
His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including institutions such as UCCA Dune, Beidaihe (2023); Serralves Museum, Porto (2022); FRAC Île-de-France, Paris (2020); IMMA–Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2017); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2016); Fridericianum, Kassel (2015); Sculpture Center, New York (2014); and Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2014).
David Douard participated in Gwangju Biennale (2018), Taipei Biennial (2014), and Biennale de Lyon (2013).
The artist would like to thank Berta Fischer and team of Konrad Fischer Galerie, Pascale Theodoly, Jeanne Theodoly Douard, Paul Theodoly Douard, Baptiste Perotin, Sarah Lévénès, Loucia Carlier, Lila Torquéo, and Atelier Gamil.
