Gaëlle Hippolyte and Lina Hentgen make up the Hippolyte Hentgen two­some. With this fic­ti­tious name, they under­take four-handed explo­ra­tions of a research area mainly ten­ding towards dra­wing and ima­gery, but they also ven­ture into other fields of repre­sen­ta­tion, such as per­for­mance and music. Drawing from both art his­tory and popu­lar culture, they appro­priate iconic images rooted in our col­lec­tive memory and re-create them in a huge multi-facet­ted and com­po­site col­lage. Cultural photos, worn thin, embark on a new life with the vir­tuoso pen of Hippolyte Hentgen. Using a wide range of media, for­mats and styles, the oeuvre plays to reti­nal delight and is fore­ver sur­pri­sing us by its colour­ful, droll and at times acer­bic verve.

The show in Albi, titled Ficus, will be spe­ci­fi­cally plan­ned for the pre­mi­ses of the Hôtel Rochegude. Accessible and vie­wa­ble for all kinds of public, it will never­the­less be concei­ved with a young public in mind. Here, this will involve expan­ding the arena of the ima­gi­na­tion, so as to broach contem­po­rary art like a resource which deve­lops in the visi­tor a free way of seeing things, and hones his or her unders­tan­ding of the world.

“ Ficus” is the fami­liar name for that wides­pread indoor plant which embel­li­shes, and some­ti­mes pathe­ti­cally sur­vi­ves in tho­rough­fa­res, hall­ways, open spaces and wai­ting rooms. It was ubi­qui­tous in fashion maga­zi­nes of the 1970s and 1980s, crea­ting an area of gree­nery making an inte­rior warm, with a “ten­ded” look. This is the plant which took over from the Aspidistra, that quin­tes­sen­tial symbol des­cri­bed by George Orwell in his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, writ­ten in 1936. The novel por­trays the English middle class of the 1930s, somew­here bet­ween exhaus­ted desi­res, dreams, and convi­via­lity: the lowly desire to live. For Hippolyte Hentgen, Ficus offers a chance to think about a place, hang on to its loan, and in it com­bine the aes­the­tic preoc­cu­pa­tions which have lived on in our theo­re­ti­cal and formal research since 2007. Ficus is the temp­ta­tion to grasp a spe­ci­fic idea of the French pop legacy, with images of our middle-class envi­ron­ment of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Ficus is a col­lec­tion of small scale sets. In the manner of a Rubik’s Cube, it is an inter­play of assem­blage and memory, where every facet has its mate­rial, its atmos­phere, and its own his­tory. Here eve­ry­thing is about decor, semio­tics and poten­tial his­to­ries where the mea­ning of things shifts and rebounds, depen­ding on the view­point. This work pro­po­ses dif­fe­rent inter­plays of scales, pers­pec­ti­ves and reflec­tions which incor­po­rate and reflect the envi­ron­ment accom­mo­da­ting them. The hybrid nature pecu­liar to these pieces would also enable the artists to conti­nue with the soft sculp­tu­res embar­ked upon in 2019.

Hippolyte Hentgen’s work has been shown in nume­rous solo exhi­bi­tions and has recently been exhi­bi­ted at the MAMAC in Nice, the Printemps de Septembre Festival in Toulouse, at the Abbaye Sainte-Croix Museum in les Sables-d’Olonne and at the Hors-Pistes Festival at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Their work is held in the col­lec­tions of the CNAP, Paris, the Abbaye Sainte-Croix Museum, Les Sables-d’Olonne, the MAC/VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine and nume­rous FRACs.