Unplugged - Charles Hascoët solo show

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September 8th  - October 8th 2022

47 rue des Tournelles, Paris 3 - Code B6237

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superzoom presents Unplugged, the third solo exhibition with the gallery of the painter Charles Hascoët, and his first at the rue des Tournelles location. Unplugged inaugurates the artist's new series, a nostalgic wink to the millennials: Nintendo controllers and other video game references as memory triggers to a whole generation that has now - more or less - grown up.

 

Abandoned in a corner of our former childhood bedroom, in our parents' attic, these unplugged game controllers become the subject of still lifes. Forsaken remnants of a bygone childhood, they are now resurrected under the brushstrokes of the artist, who had already tackled this theme with his Furbies series.

 

The large formats exhibited introduce, alongside the human figure, the octopus, a recurring element in the work of Charles Hascoët. The artist associates the animal, endowed with great sensitivity, with a state of anxiety, evoking the attachment of the octopus to its habitat, to which it clings with all the strength of its tentacles in case of danger. Tentacles which can also evoke the mess of cables necessary to the functioning of the consoles. 

 

Should we see in this creature an allegory of nostalgia and its hold on our present? Nostalgia of a before, (necessarily better), which seems to characterize our time: the glance melancholically turned towards the past, we recycle its trends, keep its objects, dwell on its memories... like so many precious relics. 

 

One of the works particularly illustrates this idea: from the Windows wallpaper to the diamond from the game The Sims, shining above the famous Chewbacca from the Star Wars saga, each element evokes a recognizable aspect of the 90s-2000s. The title of the work in question, The perfect bliss, is unequivocal. 

 

On the canvases, the octopus seems to stand for a visual reminder to the viewer, the tentacular embrace of a vague à l'âme from which one should be able to get rid of, to unplug.