The Cultural Revolution had its Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Now we have the Quotations for President Sarkozy: a montage of pictoral and textual quotes which serve as mirror and counterpoint, not so much for the organised instruction of each individual (be it pro or ad hominem), but to support the presidency as an institution; not in the mundane realm of adding glitter and sheen, but in the realm of subjectivity, an axiomatic, institutional, melancholic, theatrical order, that very realm which is the result of our most recent exercise in universal suffrage and of the gambit of free-market democracy, which has summoned him into office. His own Little Red Book.
The picture-quotes produced by Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa based on images published in the press, present the President alone, free from parasitical entourage – an art of portraiture which constitutes both a revival of socialist realism and opens the doors to a very contemporary era of “Kärcher painting”. The textual quotes, extracted from contemporary works for the most part, have been chosen by Gilles Grelet according to one prerequisite: that the montage of text and images leads to an engagement with ‘direct theory’ – a raw theory, a pure theory, theory without theoretics. In honour of Nicolas S. as well as for Helmsman Sarkozy. The man we’ve got. The one we deserve, according to the ballot box.


see an extract









 

Imagème series
224 pages
full-color printing
15 x 21 cm
ISBN: 978-2-916383-07-1
October 2009
24 euros
Citations pour le président Sarkozy
(Quotations for president Sarkozy)
pictures by
Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa
textual quotes chosen by Gilles Grelet


now available
on iPad