‘Portraits From Flateurville’

by Laurent Godard

Wednesday 1st to Wednesday 15th December 2010

Private viewing and live painting performance: 8th December 2010 18.30 to 22.30

Laurent Godard invites us to enter inside Gallery II8, leaving the door to our curiosity ajar, and the door to our imagination wide open.

We gain an insight into a part of his village; his world, Flateurville. An evolving, multifaceted narrative structure composed of a variety of artistic mediums (painting, film, text, sound, drawings, performance, architecture and installation). All elements are linked by one key part: a story written down many years ago on a till roll.

The story of this village now traverses spatial, temporal and physical boundaries. By mapping Flateurville around the world, the fictive locations that feature in the story have been made concrete, and the story-telling itself is played out in disparate contexts. It becomes an immersive experience for the visitor to these places, transposing his two-dimensional story written on paper into a three-dimensional story to travel through; told to each individual uniquely, based upon our own interpretation of its width, length and depth. Moreover, these contexts are not only used to stage the fiction, but also have become a part of the production turning in to fully developed working ‘creative zones’ for Godard to practice his painting, and for other artists to work from.

Narrative being fundamental to this creation, in ‘Portraits From Flateurville’ the story is told, but it is deliberately fragmented, encouraging the viewer to use a process of invention and imagination towards interpretation. The viewer will become acquainted with the portraits in the paintings, the leading protagonists in the story. Standing face to face will reveal a profound sense of familiarity and identification, as though having met them somewhere once before. The viewer, like the paintings, has an address, an identity and a story here. Lacking in movement, with no suggestion of environment, these figures, conceived using pale creamy oils and ‘dripped’ lines of deep burgundy glosses, remain patiently stoic in their poses until the exhibition is over.

Even in this traditional gallery context (far away from the usual site-specific context that Godard is currently producing on a large multiple scale), the viewer is still integrated into the fiction, into the moral of the story, the secret lying behind the doors to the village: that everyone and anyone has imaginative and inventive powers, stimulating creative output that, once opened, can transform and reveal gateways we never knew existed. Perhaps it was Marcel, Georges, Susan, Lola, Jean-Baptiste, Rene or other characters from the story who could be pronounced the artist of this exhibition: all multifaceted elements of the same person. This same person is able to tell the story, through multiple forms of artistic expression, and a determination to cast the same creative magic to inspire others to create their own Flateurville.

Born in 1967 in Paris France, Laurent Godard read medicine at the Garantiere, Paris. Having practiced as a dental surgeon for the first part of his early career, he turned to acting classes (Cour Florent, Paris), drawing classes, alongside developing his figurative painting technique and his passion for creative writing. His imaginary village evolved out of his participation in all of these artistic mediums, even his role as a surgeon plays a part. He soon established himself as a renowned portrait artist and story-teller, exhibiting in galleries internationally. Today, he continues to develop and expand his village, always searching for new abandoned sites to transform and add to the fictive game, while using all the narrative supports he has at his disposal to be able to tell the story in a variety of different ways and to a variety of different audiences. He is currently working towards the production of it as a feature length film.

Website: www.flateurville.com

www.flateurblog.com

Contact: amyjhilton@yahoo.com

flateurvilleinternational@gmail.com