Doing the maximum with the minimum, highlighting the different and the strange by means of the most banal and hackneyed referents: that is Pierre Ardouvin’s artistic economy. His use of domestic materials, motifs and objects, manifestly subverted, is designed to challenge the emotions without really tricking the perceptions. It is no surprise that the fairground is a recurrent motif in Ardouvin’s work. This is the emblematic kingdom of flashiness, of kitsch and mechanical sensations, with its dodgem cars and attractions, its flashing lights and insistent music. Once again, this affection for old-fashioned popular entertainment is not conveyed with nostalgia or tenderness, but in the register of cruelty and brutality. 

Courtesy of Praz-Delavallade