Thèlonious Goupil
PAYSAGES INDUSTRIELS
June 27th - July 7th 2024
Paysages industriels is a series of lamps designed for Small Small Space gallery in Milan.
Each consists of a colored cut-out and a diffusing paper. The light source stands behind and appears through like a halo.
The presence of this light - as a sun in the mist - gives the composition a narrative dimension: when lit,
the compositions are pieces of landscape.
They are industrial landscapes, an ode to the peri-urban areas that we see again and again from the roads.
Silhouettes of infrastructures illuminated by a street lamp, facades seen in «contre jour» in a haze of fine particles.
Gathered together in this showcase, Nevada, Deserto Rosso, Cloture, Plateforme, Belvedere, Woodstock and Pi
create a panorama.
They are visions of the long succession of hangars, factories, silos, gasometers, flares, cisterns, pylons and chimneys
that multiply along the edges of roundabouts and city outskirts.
Powder-coated color, rivets, warehouse-style sheet metal behind a fence.
‘ I’ve always found it hard to admit and accept the existence of these periurban infrastructures whose model is imported
straight from the USA.
They promote the use of cars, do a lot of damage to town centers, over-encourage consumption, encroache
on formerly wooded land, contribute to the artificialization of the soil, etc.
When I drive through these areas, either out of denial or to avoid being affected by their appearance, my eye sweeps
over without seeing them…..
…This project was a way for me to look at the cheerful side of the ZI* and ZAC* that make up the rural landscapes.
Thus the lamps can be seen as scale models of a more poetic development proposal of these peripheries.
*French appelation for industrial areas and Business activity areas.
Like the buildings in these industrial zones, they are made up of a façade and what’s inside. The façade is a form
whose function is not always clear, and sometimes speed - as seen from the road - reduces it to a vast flat surface set in space. The interior, the rear, is the mystery of technology, the machinery. In the case of the lamps, it is a support and a led bulb,
powered by the territory’s vast electrical grid’.
Thèlonious Goupil
