Donigan Cumming
La somme, le sommeil, le cauchemar

“After years of endlessly creating scenes with his characters, after numerous essays written about the multiple and major issues within his internationally acclaimed artistic practice, which remains profoundly contentious, Cumming poses a bewildering gesture by creating “Prologue” and “Epilogue” (2005), a diptych loosely inspired by two masters of the past, Bruegel the Elder and James Ensor. Seen for the first time in Europe, this diptych makes reference to Cumming’s entire body of work, of which he proposes an iconoclastic retrospective view.Composed of tens of thousands of cut out images, “Prologue” and “Epilogue” are places of art overpopulated by reproduction. Grandiose and seething, fascinating and repelling, these works operate like a nightmare. The real is presented in detail, with faces and bodies belonging to actual characters permanently detached from their personal history, as well as from the stories in which the artist had individually and collectively placed them. ”

Year of publication : october 2006
21×29 cm , 120 pages
Selling price : 26 €. Text in French and English.

Exhibition dates :
from November 10, 2006 to February 3, 2007.

Preface by Jean Fredette; essay by Catherine Bédard “Masquerade”.

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