Jean-Luc Moulène and Teams
Here at Mona, four new artworks by French artist Jean-Luc Moulène have recently come into being. They are made from: Triassic sandstone cut from the Australian eastern seaboard; creamy wax from the fires of industry and progress; alloyed zinc smelted by the River Derwent and Bell Bay; and rainforest timber, harvested from the depths of Lake Pieman in far western Tasmania. Each material has been carefully selected, and refined through complex and meticulous processes, according to Jean-Luc’s relentless artistic formula. An artist and many ‘teams’—curators, fabricators, digital designers, production departments, a museum—at work.
As you will see, Jean-Luc is hard to pin down: ever-changing in his output, inquisitive to the extreme, and recognising no distinction between how life and art work. Jean-Luc Moulène and Teams will also sample other works by the artist, such as one of the very few videos made to date, pallets of juice cans ‘hijacked’ from a Mexican factory, and a large cow bone wedged between mason props: boiled clean of its meat, buried for a time, and exhumed at Bushy Park.
This exhibition—the artist’s first show in Australia—is something of a geographical feat. Jean-Luc is based in the French countryside, a three-hour drive from Paris. Mona’s commissioning curator, Olivier Varenne, usually lives in Geneva. Our guest curator, Michel Blancsubé, is in Mexico. And Mona is on the opposite side of the world in Australia; as are the elemental materials used to make Moulène’s newest sculptures.
What does all this amount to? To even ask such a question is to become part of Jean-Luc’s world and process, in which one question leads to another, which leads to another, and on and on it goes. A process generating endless curiosity.
Curated by Michel Blancsubé with Trudi Brinckman and Sarah Wallace, and commissioned by Olivier Varenne
view the catalogue >
Courtesy of the artist
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Photo: Francisco Kochen
Courtesy of the artist
Header image: Axe (Axis), Chagny, 2016, Jean-Luc Moulène
Recreated by Mona, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Pietro Spartà, Chagny
Photo: Francisco Kochen