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Double Take - Gully / Alexis
Double Take celebrates the works of French artists Paul Alexis and GULLY. In their re-contextualizations of classic images, both Gully and Alexis’s masterful appropriations evoke new meanings informed by conscious experience and challenge pre-conceived associations with the familiar. Where to take a “Double Take” means to have a comical reaction to a surprising sight, the title of the exhibition references the playful colloquialism of their visual language inspired by the Appropriation movement of the 70s and 80s. By removing works of art from the traditionally linear continuum of art history and placing them within new contexts, Gully and Alexis provoke the contemporary viewer while meditating on the act of perception itself. Paul Alexis is largely known for his large-scale steel structures, where shadows of classic icons are suppressed to reveal ethereal reminders of the images engrained in, but perhaps neglected by, our collective memory. While layers of metal sheets emphasize our distance from these icons, the faces lurking under the surface permeate through time and confront our dependency on history and context in understanding. The effect highlights the essence of historical figures whose public images have lost so much meaning with the mass-production of popular culture.
Born in 1947 in France, Paul Alexis holds the prestigious position as President of the French Salon Comparaisons in Paris and has been knighted by the French National Order of the Legion of Honor; his art is now collected by numerous private collections around the world.
GULLY is a contemporary French street artist. His striking meta-paintings exhibited in “Double Take” also pay tribute to the legends of the art world, in facetious scenes of co-existence between art and observer. While playful, his works are a poignant examination of the influence of space, time, and spectatorship on the transcendent meaning of a given work of art. His works offer a single visual plane where masterpieces by history’s most famous artists from various decades converge and simultaneously reveal how visual culture has changed over time.
Gully was born in 1979 in France. From his early explorations in street art and graffiti, the artist later discovered the concept of Appropriation and has been incorporating it into his paintings on canvas ever since. This is the debut exhibition for the artist in Asia. Representing history in unexpected and sometimes anachronistic contexts, “Double Take” unfolds the history of 20th century art in a tale of how contemporary art came to be.
