About the artwork
This work was created for John Hamon's Centre Pompidou project, in which he continues to highlight the power of the image in public space, and the role of promotion as an artistic gesture in itself. The project consists of a fictitious but visible exhibition, announced as taking place from June 12, 2021 to June 21, 3021, at the Centre Pompidou. A poster is created and widely distributed, using the institution's graphic codes, while a monumental projection of its emblematic face is displayed on the building's façade. This gesture is a continuation of Hamon's work with major cultural institutions (Palais de Tokyo, Galerie Perrotin, Musée du Louvre), where he staged an attempt at integration... that went unanswered. With Print Centre Pompidou, John Hamon's work is at once ironic, legal and poetic, deliberately blurring the boundaries between institutional recognition and self-produced visibility. He hijacks the image and visual authority of the Centre Pompidou to insert his own image - the same frontal, quasi-administrative photographic portrait that has haunted urban space for over 20 years. By placing this image on the façade of one of the temples of contemporary art, the artist short-circuits the usual circuits of validation and stages a critique of the logics of access to recognition.
Expert opinion
This work perfectly embodies John Hamon's art, which straddles the border between street art, conceptual art and happening. What could pass for a farce - displaying the same face over and over again - becomes, through repetition and the occupation of symbolic spaces, an artistic strategy in its own right.
About the artist
Born in 1982, John Hamon lives and works in Paris. Since 2001, he has been promoting himself as an artist, and has embarked on a unique artistic process involving the posting of his own portrait on the walls of Paris and other cities around the world. This practice questions the notion of promotion and identity in the field of art, associated with the formula: "It's promotion that makes the artist, or the zero degree of art." In this approach, there is a desire to make the artist master of his own destiny. His work questions the boundary between art and self-promotion, reflecting a reflection on visibility and recognition in the art world.
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