Aurélien Froment // Of Shadow of Ideas


The National College of Art and Design Gallery, Dublin, is pleased to announce Of Shadow of Ideas, a solo exhibition of Dublin-based French multidisciplinary artist Aurélien Froment.

NCAD Gallery exhibition open view 5.30 – 8pm Thursday 3rd March 2016.
Exhibition continues Friday 4th – Wednesday 30th March 2016. Gallery opening hours 1-5pm, Mon- Fri.

‘..its model is not a palace but a forest.. not as a depository of fixed appearances, not as the source of all taxonomy, but as an example of continuous metamorphosis.’ John Berger, ‘The Ideal Palace’

Froment’s installation of approximately ninety unmarked photographs represents three extensive research projects examining the life work of art and architecture autodidact Ferdinand Cheval, pedagogue and pioneering educationalist Frederick Fröbel and Italian architect Paolo Soleri.

In his artworks, Aurélien Froment investigates subjectivity, montage, the experience of images and the spaces in which they exist. For Of Shadow Of Ideas he experimented with education curatorial methodologies. Froment enacted a seminar series over a six week period prior to the exhibition in association with the MA Art in Contemporary World (ACW). Through engaging the National College of Art and Design master’s degree students, Froment considers his presentation of material, in part, contingent on the relationships forged on a weekly basis in a dialogic setting.

Central to the work is the interplay and reconfiguration of artist, institution and viewer relations. In retrospect, three life’s work share points of confluence in the becoming of an institution of a work, Cheval crafts a tomb museum in Palais Idéal, Fröbel in creating the first Kindergarten; Soleri in visioning Arcosanti.

Aurélien Froment’s exhibition is commissioned by the NCAD Gallery. Of Shadows Of Ideas is co-produced by FRAC Midi-Pyrénées / Les Abattoirs, Toulouse France. Aurélien Froment is represented by Galerie Marcelle Alix.