Etienne Chambaud works with a plethora of artistic mediums, shifting between sculpture, photography, sound, installation and collage to better understand the way in which we perceive objects or ideas. Frames and cages frequently surface as elastic aesthetic motifs within his projects. Animals are filmed in captivity, wooden frames dwarf small photographs and atlas’s are cut and collaged, troubling their usual boundaries and placements. Chambuad’s film La Nuit Suave (2014) typifies his interest in epistemology. The piece investigates how specific sites have influenced the modern gaze of nature, dissecting the role of spaces such as natural history museums and zoos. Both places which physically and conceptually contain beings and knowledge. Each body of work is developed over prolonged periods of research, and each installation then takes shape according to the fluctuations within Chambuad’s findings. Inventive and spatially arresting, Chambuad’s installations have an undoubtable Dadaist sentiment, as they force audiences to confront their own associations through bizarre juxtapositions and material experimentations. ...
Founded by Pamela Echeverría in Mexico City, LABOR opened in 2009 working with artists whose creative processes are based on long term research. They have a strong commitment with the visions and concerns that their artists have towards the contemporary social/political context. They work with a mix of young and mid-career artists, both Mexican and international. With whom they work closely and assume an active role in the projects they develop. The work of these artists address topics such as value and exchange; economic systems and social structures; the exploitation of natural resources, the ethics of human behaviour, and the hidden political structures of society. ...
