For his first solo exhibition in Italy, the French artist David Douard will present a site-specific work centered around a suspended sculpture. An anthropomorphic figure, of which we only get to glance two legs midair, caught in the moment of descending from above or jumping – but actually hanging – which the artist connects to the phenomenon of suicide, especially in adolescence. The ambiguous image creates a state of uncertainty regarding the scene we are looking at, a hybrid device called to respond to the issue of language, the interruption of thought, but also to the possibility that word and knowledge are continually revitalized through an uninterrupted flow between the sphere of life and that of death.

SO, the two letters which like the keys on a typewriter are printed on the soles of the hanging figure, convey such a sense of continuity. SO is the conjunction used in common language at the beginning of a sentence, as an expression which suggests the subsequent processing of a thought. But also emphasizes a break, a transition, a point between a before and an after. The artist relates in this way the physical presence of the sculptures in words, concepts, verses and poems that anonymous authors have put on the web, summarizing in an imaginary animist character the origin of thought and of all things, in the suspended sphere that inanimate objects trigger with respect to their ability to act when giving back an image.

David Douard was born in 1983 in France. He lives and works in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include: Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö, Sweden (2014); Mo'Swallow, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2014); )juicy o'f the nest, SculptureCenter, New York (2014). Among group exhibitions: Ernesto, CEAAC, Strasbourg, France (2014); L'Europe des Artistes, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2014); The Great Acceleration, Taipei Biennial 2014, cur. by Nicolas Bourriaud, Tapei, Taiwan (2014); Geographies of Contamination, cur. by Vincent Honoré, Laura McLean-Ferris and Alexander Scrimgeour, DRAF, London (2014); Meanwhile... Suddenly And Then, 12th Biennale de Lyon, France (2013). He works with Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris.