Obus gothique

OX’s artistic work revolves mainly around advertising hoardings, which the Frenchman has been refashioning, without permission, since the 1980s. Such billboards are strategically positioned by the advertising industry, often in places where the traffic will flush by as many potential consumers as possible. Together with the legendary artist group Frères Ripoulin, this pioneer of artistic reappropriation was already repurposing billboards as canvases and exhibition surfaces long before a new generation of ex-sprayers began to popularise a form of street art.
His trademark practice is a minimalist-abstract and yet – or precisely for this reason – immensely effective interaction with a work’s specific environment. Less frequently, as with his in situ work Obus gothique, he creates installations in which the negative form also plays a role. Here, the archway reveals the bowels of heavy industry behind. For the viewer, this may recall an arch from a piece of sacred architecture or – in light of the role of the Völklingen Ironworks during the two World Wars – the shape of an artillery shell. Who can say with any certainty?

Robert Kaltenhäuser

as part of INTERREG GRACE