Yann Sérandour

L’Enseigne (Fig. 123)
2015

Pigment print mounted on aluminium, frame
50 x 75 cm (framed: 52 x 77 x 3,5 cm)
Edition of 2 plus 1 AP
Price on request

Yann Sérandour
Born in 1974, Vannes, France
Lives and works in Rennes, France

The work of an historian could be that of filling gaps, giving meaning to a suite of events from exhumed documentary sources and to construct, like a novelist, a plot in order tell us a story that really took place. The work of Yann Sérandour is similar to the work of that historian: using artefacts borrowed from his predecessors, potential accidents and chances, he leads investigations and indexes missing pieces, in order to prolong and cast doubt on histories.

The work of Yann Sérandour has often referred to conceptual art of the sixties and seventies, periods of particular interest to him because of their copious diffusion in the form of publications and prints – his material of predilection. In his recent work, he moves his attention to other fields and more distant times, strengthening a temporal gap with our contemporaneity.

The lower-right-hand corner of a double-page on which the painting L’Enseigne de Gersaint (The Shop Sign of Gersaint, 1720) by Jean Antoine Watteau has been reproduced is dog-eared. As the figure of a dog during delousing raises in the corner, the sight of the trade in art objects vanishes in the background.