Don’t follow the guide !
A monographic exhibition
Don’t follow the guide ! is the great monographic exhibition
dedicated to Mécaniques Discursives,
the tireless explorations of videographer Yannick Jacquet and engraver Fred Penelle
The monographic exhibition features a dozen pieces from over 70 globe-hopping works they created together from 2011 onwards.
POETIC AND SUBVERSIVE
Fred Penelle and Yannick Jacquet’s Mécaniques Discursives proposes a very singular and innovative approach that combines wood engraving and contemporary digital creation.
Their poetic and subversive visual quest collapses time between two eras: those of Gutenberg and Big Data. As the cult of innovation struggles to fulfil its emancipatory promises, Mécaniques Discursives creates a space in which dreams and the imagination are brought to life.
The monographic exhibition offers an immersive three-dimensional experience: a maze plotted through hallucinatory iconography, haunted by the vanity of our own inner mechanics.
“There is no designated route to follow as the temporality imposed upon us is more like that of a video game. That is how Mécaniques Discursives plays with the visual: no beginning, no end.”
A MODULAR,
TOURING EXHIBITION
The itinerant exhibition is conceived to adapt to the spaces that it occupies: it can be set up in its entirety or focus on certain pieces The works selected are the permanent versions of those initially created in situ.
The monograph plunges us into the universe created by Fred Penelle and Yannick Jacquet. There, we find their visual languages expressed through different formats and technologies.
Incorporating older works and juxtaposing formats with striking differences (those composed of metal and recycled objects, mosaics of paintings, floor installations) offers an overview of how each artists’ work has evolved.
“A critical look at our techno-industrial society through these exquisite corpses with their dark sense of humour.”
A NARRATIVE AND ICONOGRAPHIC MAZE
Works echo and respond to one another. Motifs and infographic data collide in the deceptive discursive turbulence conjured up by the two artists. The journey is presented as an entirely three-dimensional experience. This 360° narrative labyrinth, haunted by the vanity of our own inner mechanics, has only one instruction: “Don’t follow the guide”.
“The exhibition immerses the visitor in a space that exists outside of time. This space becomes the setting for a work whose media we cannot completely grasp, and whose slivery moonlight bathes the installations as part of its seductive power.”
JOURNEY AND PERMANENCE
Yannick Jacquet and Fred Penelle’s project has been met with significant critical and public success. It won the Milano Design Week Tech Award and the Collectors’ Prize at the Slick Art Fair (Brussels). For a decade it has travelled to contemporary art museums (MACRO, Rome; Bozar, Brussels), digital art biennales (Némo, Paris; STRP, Eindhoven), design weeks (Milan; Shenzhen), and prestigious festivals (Signal Festival, Prague; Llum BCN, Barcelona).
In 2021, a first permanent large-scale outdoor version was commissioned by the city of Brussels. It is now visible on the city center's main avenue, everynight, at 21 boulevard Anspach.
