The Lie Was Plain. The Lake A Stain.

PUBLICATION
DAVIDE BALULA - STOMACH RAINBOW
BOOK RELEASE ON JUNE 20 2008
at Le Confort Moderne (F-Poitiers)
with a live guitar-voice by Davide Balula
7.pm Free Entrance
Edition: 1000 copies.

Davide Balula is a multifaceted artist, barely thirty years old, who demonstrates the same conceptual fidelity whether it be in the field of music or any of the creative arts. Composer, musician, songwriter, dabbler in electronics with several collectives, founder of «L’appareil» («The Apparatus», an open stage organization for various artistic projects), he has worked with Le Confort Moderne for four years. Some of the joint projects include a exhibition of his first works for Low_Fidelity accompanied by a live concert for the twentieth anniversary of Le Confort Moderne and «Live in the Green House» by Peter Coffin, with Labranisch, accompanied by the release on vinyl of the same. It seems only natural to present an exhibition dedicated to his whole works and productions, an opportunity to take a look at this «work in progress», to show a range of emblematic works, interspersed with important new productions.

Davide expresses himself through visual cues, sounds, electronics and plastics. His experimental techniques are free from contingencies and therefore from logic itself. His works are at the cusp of the artistic and the scientific world, where sound, rhythm and movement (three elements essential to the deployment of his works) progress together towards a result at once organic and technological. The manufactured objects and technological material leave at first glance an impression of mechanical frigidity, whereas the detail of the drawings, the presence of vegetable matter, the music and sound lead into a fragile and poetic universe.

Art and technology, audio and visual, nature and the artificial alteration and suspension of time, sculptural forms and organic shapes, material solidity opposed to the potential energy within; Balula’s project brings together diametrically opposed states of being, places us at the heart of an experience that aims, not to blatantly explain, but rather to gently infl uence our entire gestalt. A composition that oscillates between sophistication and rampant pillage, finely scripted, that leads us from an authoritarian beginning to a poetic finish. Musical references throng throughout Davide Balula’s work; the names of the works are reminiscent of pop song titles, and the exhibition, an album title : Live at Le Confort Moderne.

Photo : © Pierre Antoine

As the mutation of ideas is demonstrated by the ensemble of Balula’s works, so does the book present an ongoing transformation of discussion: by virtue of a literally timed lecture (in place of the page number is the estimated time of reading) the writing reaches out to two opposite poles, critical analysis and evocative poetry, both inextricably linked.
Published for the occasion of the exhibition The Lie Was Plain. The Lake a Stain. at Le Confort Moderne, this work, part autobiography, part portfolio, explores the multilayered creations of Davide Balula. A well-measured balance of essays, notes, and interviews, combined with artistic contributions, the whole is punctuated by a selection of Balula’s works from 2003 onwards.
Once opened, fragments of the book take on a new function; the reader finds himself having invested in a tool of unsuspected virtues: correctly positioned on each chapter heading, a mysterious bookmark re-establishes the completeness of the titles...

More than a simple printed book, the work encloses several other secrets which provide the reader with the pleasure of a surprising exploration.

Contributors :
Kathy Alliou, Laetitia Bénat, Julien Berthier, Yann Chevallier, Peter Coffin, Antonio Contador, Angela Detanico, Béatrice Gross, Rafael Lain, Olivier Lamm, Stéphane Laporte, Le Gentil Garçon, Christine Macel, Valeria Motelli, Rui Pombal, Elisa Pône, Lee Ranaldo, Mirjam Schaub, Leah Singer, Francesco Stocchi

Le Lac , Le Mensonge
Le Confort Moderne
185, rue du faubourg du pont-neuf
BP 502 – 86012 Poitiers