30 june to 28 october 2007

For his exhibition at the CCC, Malachi Farrell has chosen to deal with war. This theme gathers several of his concerns about violence in the world and more generally, his concerns about what rules the world. It is a tragically current issue regarding the American military situation in Iraq.

This exhibition gathers three installations; two of them have been created for this specific occasion. The viewer is immersed into three symbolic moments of the war process in which the soldier’s own experience is as strong as collective history: recruitment (“Recruiting Station”, 2007), military training (“P5”, 2007) and the commemoration for soldiers who died during the war (“What’s next”, created in 2002, here modified). Through these three moments, Malachi Farrell highlights the paradox of this domesticated violence, perpetuated by the political system and organized by a society which deplores the dead ones as well as it causes their tragic fate.

Produced by the CCC, the work “Recruiting Station (the def song)” (2007) is the center of the project. It recreates a nearly real military recruitment center on Coney Island beach (New York). The work can be seen as a kind of gloomy walk. Some rangers, wearing military headgears, are on the roof of the building as if they were birds of ill omen, symbols of the guilty conscience of war. They are dancing on a song by Doctor L.In addition to the previous works, a series of drawings invites us to discover the artist’s world. It is a travel journal relating his experience in the United-States where we can read his feelings and concerns about its functioning and obsessions: terrorism, Ku Klux Klan or the abundance of firearms.

Many thanks  : Jet Lag K