Jerome Cavalière

Saying that Jerome Cavalière's sporting career is echoed in his artistic work does not just mean that he makes the most of his skills as France's vice-champion in team archery in order to produce his works. It is in fact possible to read in this overlap a clue to a more general choice, which involves creating within the porousness of the fields in question. Jerome Cavalière takes pleasure in muddling the "art world" and life, and his oeuvre strives to cause the codes of one world to topple over into the other. He accordingly appropriates television reports (Competitions Are for Horses, Not Artists), and videos of brawls on the Internet (Désaccords/Disagreements with Stéphane Déplan), and by changing the subtitles and voice-overs, he wittily re-addresses them. Conversely, he also enjoys delivering instructions for use so that everyone can reproduce famous contemporary art works (Art at Home). Jerome Cavalière's entire body of work is being developed in the direction of the seemingly inappropriate encounter; this latter gives rise to an off-beat and critical world which, with conviction, asserts that the autonomy of art is not on the program me... Translated by Simon Pleasance