Untitled (What do you believe, your eyes or my words)
Philippe Parreno
Philippe Parreno
2007
Pigment print on Beaux-Art 315 gr. paper
60 3/4" x 103" (154,5 x 262 cm)
Edition of 5.
Shown in collaboration with independent curators Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, New York
This print is an enlarged copy of a phrase written by an 18th century automaton invented by Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721–1790), a Swiss watchmaker who created animated dolls to help his firm sell watches and mechanical birds. The automaton was called L’Ecrivain (The Writer), and is considered his most well-known and complex automaton, created by Jaquet-Droz in 1770 with his sons Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Composed of 6,000 pieces, The Writer, originally programmed to write a love letter, is in fact able to write any custom text up to 40 letters long using a goose feather quill, which he inks from time to time, shaking the wrist to prevent ink from spilling. The doll’s eyes follow the text being written, and his head moves when he returns to take more ink. The Writer, along with two other Jaquet-Droz automatons, can be found in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. They are considered to be ancestors of modern computers.
Artist Philippe Parreno programmed The Writer to write the phrase: “What do you believe your eyes or my words”, documenting the automaton’s writing on film and in photographs. The film of The Writer scribing Parreno’s phrase was presented as part of an exhibition of the same name held at London’s Haunch of Venison gallery, April 5 - May 12, 2007.
Philippe Parreno (b 1964) is a French artist and filmmaker of Algerian heritage. Parreno's work primarily revolves around the interrogation of the nature of an image, as well as the modes of its exhibition. He frequently draws on pre-existing material and then enriches it with his own, mostly narrative ideas.
Parreno work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide, and is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and the Museum of the 21st Century, Japan.
Inquiries: info@moss-gallery.com
Shown in collaboration with independent curators Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, New York
This print is an enlarged copy of a phrase written by an 18th century automaton invented by Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721–1790), a Swiss watchmaker who created animated dolls to help his firm sell watches and mechanical birds. The automaton was called L’Ecrivain (The Writer), and is considered his most well-known and complex automaton, created by Jaquet-Droz in 1770 with his sons Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Composed of 6,000 pieces, The Writer, originally programmed to write a love letter, is in fact able to write any custom text up to 40 letters long using a goose feather quill, which he inks from time to time, shaking the wrist to prevent ink from spilling. The doll’s eyes follow the text being written, and his head moves when he returns to take more ink. The Writer, along with two other Jaquet-Droz automatons, can be found in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. They are considered to be ancestors of modern computers.
Artist Philippe Parreno programmed The Writer to write the phrase: “What do you believe your eyes or my words”, documenting the automaton’s writing on film and in photographs. The film of The Writer scribing Parreno’s phrase was presented as part of an exhibition of the same name held at London’s Haunch of Venison gallery, April 5 - May 12, 2007.
Philippe Parreno (b 1964) is a French artist and filmmaker of Algerian heritage. Parreno's work primarily revolves around the interrogation of the nature of an image, as well as the modes of its exhibition. He frequently draws on pre-existing material and then enriches it with his own, mostly narrative ideas.
Parreno work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide, and is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and the Museum of the 21st Century, Japan.
Inquiries: info@moss-gallery.com
