Claire Fontaine "Extreme Distress" Solo Exhibition

Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, detail of the Sunlight Room, 2008. Claire Fontaine's "Extreme Distress" solo exhibition is on display at Chantal Crouss Gallery until February 14. Claire Fontaine is a new French art collective founded in 2004, declaring themselves "ready-made artists" who develop a new conceptual form of art, often mixing other genres. They excel at appropriating and transforming objects, critiquing current political incompetence and the crisis of uniqueness in contemporary art within everyday contexts. The press release for this exhibition states: "Extreme Distress = meditative work world like a closed space = style of possibilities through objects and symbols that prison is beyond walls = exploring part of work like inside a prison and prison like outside work. Work like prison fantasy / machine manufacturing and prison / punishment machine like rejecting wage logic and broadly felt economy."

The exhibition begins with a flickering neon sign installation at the gallery entrance reading "Please god make tomorrow better," responding to current general and anonymous political incompetence. In the main hall, a monumental fluorescent tube installation reads "Please come back" in large advertisement-style lettering; it lights up automatically as people walk past, presenting a humorous message of consumer society. Two office water dispensers stand on either side, one filled with water-colored vodka and the other with whiskey, revealing an altered consciousness facing office class structures. Tennis balls, both broken and intact, are scattered in the corner, representing a discarded situation. A French blue-white-red flag poster bears the text "Work more, think less," satirizing the French president's motto "Work more, earn more."

A Sunlight Room features a series of lighting fixtures and a large mirror directly in front. The room is warm like summer, making visitors sweat profusely, allowing them to avoid depression during this cold, gloomy winter climate. An office cabinet holds a series of cups inserted with colorful ballpoint pens, metaphorically depicting the office-work context. On the office counter sits a lifelike arm wearing a prestigious Rolex watch, recalling how French President Sarkozy frequently displayed his Rolex, mysteriously presenting social class and alluding to people's current life within the capitalist social system. Between objects and forms, imagination and satire, critique and humor, it analyzes the state of current society.