John Armleder: Out (Out!)

Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1880), a French doctor and naturalist, invented anatomical (and botanical) papier-mâché models that were widely distributed in the 19th and 20th centuries. This book presents a series of works by John Armleder based on these models, which he acquired partly by accident, and somewhat mischievously. In an interview with Mai-Thu Perret included in this volume, we come to understand that it is not so much the educational or iconographical dimension of these objects that the artist wished to reproduce, but rather the cascade of references to questions, technical as much as abstract or material, and also linked to figuration. Armleder therefore addresses questions of reproduction, displacement, and meaning, always in their multiple shifts, contradictions, and bifurcations.