You'll Never Walk Alone: An interview with Frederic Pradeau.

John Byrne

'You'll Never Walk Alone' is a new interactive installation by Parisian artist Frederic Pradeau which has been commissioned by Static Gallery and curated by John Byrne and Paul Sullivan. The work itself is a large conveyor belt that carries bricks to a printer, where they are printed with the lyrics to You'll Never Walk Alone', before they are carried off and dropped in a pile at the end of the installation. For this to happen, the installation has to be 'triggered' by gallery viewers singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' into a microphone. Pradeau created the piece in response to a visit to Liverpool. According to Pradeau "I tried to collect several constituents of Liverpool's identity from my first impressions. It was like a stock-taking of my memory: docks, buildings, stadium, music, sound, exhibitions, and chaotic areas, maybe I had to try to turn Liverpool between a dream and a nightmare."

To date, the work of Parisian based artist Frederic Pradeau has often combined wit, irony and a dark sense of humour with the production of highly accomplished installations, performances and objects. From making 'stills' which produce pure alcohol from Coca-Cola, to rugs made out of dust and the blindfold construction of IKEA furniture, Pradeau's oeuvre points towards the banality and frequent futility of contemporary everyday life.

Ikea...............................................Distillery

I first came across his work in 2005 at a private view at the Galleria Raucci/Santamaria in Naples. One of his exhibits was of a small mound of white powder surrounded by a square of four neon lights. I later learnt that this floor-based piece was not exactly what it seemed. Pradeau had used the obvious syntax and grammar of Minimalist art to launch a subversive attack on the experience of art in a white walled gallery space. The powder was calcium chloride (the chemical used to make dehumidifiers work) and the neon lights gave off the equivalent heat that one would expect in the Sahara desert. The combination of these two elements, calcium chloride and heat, literally began to drain the gallery of moisture. As viewers pondered this piece, it was dehydrating them – taking a small part of their bodily moisture and absorbing this into the work itself. In this way, Pradeau had taken Duchamp's famous dictum – that a work of art is completed by the viewer – and used this as the rational for making an artwork which stole from the very essence of its viewers as they innocently contemplated its modernist/formalist, sculptural values.

The day after this opening I was able to meet with Frederic and discuss his work. I found it so interesting that, rather than writing a review of his show for the Static pamphlet, I suggested that we should give him a show. In February 2006 Frederic came over to Liverpool and, as part of the hospitality extended to him by Paul Sullivan, we took him on an unconventional tour of the city. This took him off the usual tourist route of Liverpool city centre and, instead, took him through the docklands of Liverpool before finishing with a tour around the area surrounding Anfield and Liverpool Football Club. As a football fan, we knew that Frederic would be impressed by this historic stadium, its tradition of European sporting glory and the combination of tenements, public houses, shops and dereliction which surround it. We had no idea, however, that this would inspire Frederic to turn his perceptions and memories of Liverpool into the installation that he has made for Static. We had, quite literally, given him an open brief. That Frederic has taken this opportunity to make a new work which references both the city of Liverpool and the football club named after it is a delight to Paul Sullivan and myself (we are both season ticket holders at Liverpool F.C.). More importantly, that Frederic has used his skill, guile and creativity to make a contemporary work that resonates so clearly with its context - as well as broader issues of European identity, industrial heritage and entropy - is to the credit of an artist who has developed the ability to disarm, subvert and critically unpack a given situation with elegance and style.

Interview:

JB: Fred, could you please describe to us your latest work for Static and, if possible, say something about how your ideas for this work came about?

FP: The project for static is like a printing factory for red bricks with a conveyer belt system. The system works when you sing the hymn of Liverpool Football Club and it prints the slogan 'YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE' on bricks. After printing, the bricks fall down at the entrance of the space and design a pile.

The idea of the singing system is less to sing really than to think deeply - like Clint Eastwood in the movie Firefox when he must think in Russian to release the rockets - and in this case it's the complex action to think deeply about football.

For sure it's very pleasant to release a factory's machine with a song.

At first, after visiting Liverpool and the Static space I felt like I had to make an installation, maybe because the space is large and also because it was an opportunity to make one. I had in my mind the piece 'l'homme qui retrecit' and I wanted to find a connection with it. 'l'homme qui retrecit' is an important piece for me, it was my first big installation and I wanted to use it like a reference. Size, dimensions, proportions and materials - many elements as much as the possibility to create a sense. So I tried to collect several constituents of Liverpool's identity by my first feelings. It was like a stock-taking of my memory: docks, buildings, stadium, music, sound, exhibitions, and chaotic areas...I had some materials to work and after it was like playing dice - you mix more and more dices as much as solutions.

'L'homme qui retrecit'

The artistic work is a poetical filter and the poetry is the world in high resolution. My purpose was to break away with the analytic understanding of the art and just do it freely, to misuse, to exaggerate, have the right to love the conveyer belt just because i think that is beautiful.

Duchamp liked to talk about the fourth dimension and maybe i had to try to turn Liverpool between a dream and a nightmare.

JB: Could you tell us more about 'l'homme qui retrecit'?

FP: 'L'homme qui retrecit' was the title of my first solo show in january 2004 at the Corentin Hamel Gallery. The Gallery was in rue Louise Weiss, a famous street for contemporary art with a few famous international galleries. I'm specifying because the context was very important because there were several private views at the same time and so I was certain to have a number of important visits. I had previously shown the distillery of Coca-Cola, and also built IKEA furniture blindfolded in the same context. I wanted to prove that my work was serious and, maybe more, that my favourite subject was not jokes but seriousness and doom watch.

This was my state of mind and my food for thought.

I think that the human disaster is when you are invisible, when nobody sees you and that you have the sensation that you don't even exist, it's a question of existing rather than living.

I often use some joke concept because I think art is often a total farce.

I often use social and politic situations because i think we can't escape from them.

I like to do funny pieces so that the seriousness of the situation is obvious to everybody.

From the street, the gallery appeared white, luminous and apparently empty. Inside, from the office, the frame of my construction was visible.

In fact, I used a standard system for construction of habitations and cheap houses. It's some sheet rock and steel frame, each sheet is 2.5 meters by 1.2 meters. In France 2.5 meters is the standard size of height from floor to ceiling in mass construction. I wanted to standardize the gallery space to be the same as the standard spaces where most people live in most houses. For sure, most people are not the art circles people.

The height from floor to ceiling of the Gallery was 2.75 meters. The difference between this and the standard mass building height of 2.5 meters was 14%. So I built a new gallery space inside the old one that was smaller by 14%.

Because the replica was only 14% smaller, nobody could tell the difference when they entered the gallery space. I put my book on a table in the office to invite people to come to the far end of the gallery. From the office, people were able to find out the truth, to see that a replica gallery space had been built that was smaller than the old one.

I liked the idea of doing something almost invisible and then let people find out the truth. I loved this right moment. It's very Duchampian!

Of course, the piece raised a few questions: Is it an art piece? So white, so void? Is it like a piece of new realism, or is it a formalist piece. Saleable? To shrink a collectors spaces and to change their social status or for snob people?

I had looked for a perfect tune to develop between me and a specific situation, and, on several levels, to propose a piece that would act like accidentally getting a splinter.

So, the translation of 'L'homme qui retrecit' is 'The Shrinking Man' - like the Jack Arnold movie 'The Incredible Shrinking Man'. In Arnold's film Scott Carey's transformation took place after he was contaminated by a radioactive cloud. I think that the piece was also a process of understanding. At first all looked normal. After you find out the truth and, at the end - if you put in the effort - you can understand the real sense, from physical to metaphysical. If you don't, you shrink.

JB: Finally, Could you tell us a bit more about Duchamp, your relation to him as an artist, and the idea of 'trying to turn Liverpool between a dream and a nightmare'?

FP: So, there is Neanderthal man, Homo sapiens and Marcel Duchamp. Marcel Duchamp made the debut of a new art era.
I love Duchamp because he's important for art. Thought distinguishes man from animals and Duchamp distinguish man from men. I'm very interested by his life, he was Picasso's contemporary and so much different. I love his cold way of understanding the world, he used strong-arm tactics to make art. Also, he was able to do some important simple things - and enormous.

I wanted to turn Liverpool between a dream and a nightmare because that's how life is. At first, its fun to sing a song and to make the conveyor belt move along. Soon you begin to think more about it. I think this is how Duchamp's 'Readymades' worked. They were cold and clinical everyday objects. The kind of objects you don't really think about. But when you do, you begin to realise that there is a nightmare going on underneath the illusion of the mundane and the everyday. This was also not the only level that Duchamp was working on. His contemporaries were artists like Picasso. They had a sensibility; they made beautiful things, superficial things. Maybe Duchamp wanted to kill this kind of art! Or maybe he just wanted to kill art.

When I first came to Liverpool and we drove along the docks, all was normal, ships, port, people. But when we turned off the road we saw giant warehouses with broken fronts, piles of rubbish, burned out cars, people huddled around fires. It's not just Liverpool. Life is like this everywhere. Life has an underbelly and it's the artist's job to point this out. For sure, the artist does not have to make things beautiful, there are enough people in the world who are made to make things beautiful, to paper over the cracks. The job of the artist is like putting a glove on and then peeling it off slowly to turn it inside out. It's still the same glove, but all of a sudden you see it from the other side, how it's made.

A lot of my work begins with humour, but soon you think about what’s happening and you also see the dark side that accompanies this. 'L'homme qui retrecit' was like this. From the outside you thought it was just an empty gallery space. But if you went into the far end of the gallery you saw that the gallery space was fake, that I had built a smaller gallery inside the real gallery space. But it did not stop here. Then you find out that the fake gallery space is built from standardised materials, that the gallery has become the kind of space that most people live in. It is no longer part of the art world. Then, of course, how does somebody possess it, what do they do if they need to buy it? Do they have a label to tell people that this fake gallery space was 14% smaller than its exact original? or do they have to re-build another fake space around it to make it work again? These are the kinds of questions that artists need to ask, to make people see the nightmare beneath the dream. This is what I mean when I say I want my machine to turn Liverpool between a dream and a nightmare.

JB: I agree. Frederic, thank you very much.

FP: Merci.