It is with great pleasure to present the first exhibition in the gallery by David Douard, BLOOD O’ US.

After a series of visits to London, in an effort of familiarizing himself with the gallery space and its surroundings, the rapid changes the area is going through became apparent. The surrounding never-ending construction became the center point as (in a space filled with windows looking out) it directs the psychological as well as physical processes that take place indoors.  The windows become the luminous backdrop for the show, and David takes the space as material to mold softly and give it a new look. The view, a constant transformative performance that happens for the observer, is of workers destroying and rebuilding, machines that come and go and constant changes that if one forgets about the new urban dominating forms can seem to appear all of a sudden.

After spending a week in the space, a series of performances took place, and like a plastic surgeon the artist changed the usual look that is the identity of the gallery, an allegory for a constructed personality, an existing character.  As an act of resistance to the ‘authority’ of the gallery, he cut and altered the paths and twisted the usual ways one expects a contemporary art space to be. What firstly looks like an emptied space is in fact a room that carries a series of about seven different variations, proposals for different identities (that have now vanished).

The show is composed of two main pieces, BLOOD O’ US, an installation where the model and actress Hari Nef, the only image in the show, appears on a low-fi screen attached on the window, a free standing construction wall and two sound works coming from different sources. South London singer Klein mixed with collected musical material from a recent exhibition and David’s daughter’s voice, resonate and echo in the space. The transgendered body becomes here a focal reference as the penultimate transformative position (man to woman, or vice versa), a pop idol in full blossom, the posture a reference to historical portraits from the history of art. Acte de Salon is a work that was created in the space and defines a new direction in David’s practice. Reflecting the architectural interventions, the composition is of found and made elements and by association transforms the gallery into a mask in itself, a proposition to see things differently even where things are invisible but end up revealing themselves; an act of a possible silent revolution.

Other works exist in the space, so please ask the staff of the gallery to show you.