The material wisdom and sensualism with which David Douard composes can go back in time to the 18th century when artists - at the time mostly painters - aimed at heightened emotions and created scenes that while seemingly naif and idyllic, heavy on timely drapes and daily affairs, talk about revolution and social change.

Despite history, Douard is a sculptor. And a composer, though above all he is a poet.
Like for everyone born in the ‘80s, technology as we know it today grew as we were growing.

All physical experiences had to be adjusted and rethought and reinvented. Sculpture, like the urban experience, had to change as well.

Because Douard used to live in the city, like a flaneur and a street artist - a poet - his language works in an enigmatic way: letters and words become signals and abstract messengers to follow this path. While materials that appear in the street as signifiers enter his work in an elemental way as they get dressed with images and smaller sculptures and tiny objects.

He said “the smallest details are often the biggest forms of resistance,” and this is true in art and in life.

The tongue has become part of a lexicon that, like a punctuation mark, reminds us that everything in his world is speech and eros.

Something that often comes to mind when one looks at his work is the law.

As his compositions come across as objects encapsulating disobedience, disguise and disappearance, one often asks what is his relationship to power.

And it feels like the right question.

The system of power that lies in the heart of a teenager conquering a city is what feeds his work; the codes different cultures invent in order to exist in a city, whether illegal or outcast, this ancient survival tool of
a symbol to claim a space, to let others know that they’re there and the rest imagine what can hide behind indecipherable scribbles. The city, like every central system of power, comes with subjects and inhabitants that while expressing themselves, add new layers into it, visible to the ones that see.

Douard’s work is so dense in messages and meanings and emotions that one can miss it all and get lost in the thing in itself.

We are very happy to present this new series of sculptural works in London by David that marks his fifth exhibition at the gallery : )

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au bout des ongles une fleur de plastique pousse

en dessous et

fait coulé

une lessive qui cache les larves organisé/ le parti

des avatars retouché

les emotions en coloriage,

fabrique en secret le futur des rois

innocent

sa revendique de partout

la tête chaude, les corps séché.

bouge tou le temps. qui savent pas et

que le seul temps c’est

les cheveux l’odeur de la méfiance

deja a 6 ans. le monde

comme on l aime.

le monde des étoiles et des grillages.

le meme gout

, quotidien. esquive,

donne tout.

séché , assis

a ravalé

rien ne leur appartient, mais tout.

le sel de l eau.

le soleil

é le menton haut. vole en marchant

errant. au ancre solide

des pattes et des bonbons.

du chlore é des hameçons.

l odeur des rat et de la nuque rasé

le front fatigué

le sourire caché dans la vérité.

comme un truc écrit au fond des mes muscles

écrit avec des fils noué

ca sert a rien mais ca alimente la pensé

j’ai tourné en rond sur mon axe et vue des millers d anges sortir leur arbalète bleu

é en constellation

a qq millimètre du sol maintenant

pensé

a ne rien possédé

mais vouloir tjs tou touché

DD

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at the tip of the nails a plastic flower is growing

underneath and

makes t drip

laundry

detergent that hides organized larvaes/ the party

retouchd avatars

w big clothin proudly perforated dance

the emotions as colouring,

secretly fabricating the future of kings

innocent

everywhere they reclaimin

the head warm, the bodis

dried.

alwz movin. not knowin and

that the only time is

the hair the smell of distrust

alredy at age 6. the world

the way we like t.

the world of stars and wire

fences.

the same taste

, daily. dodge,

give it all u got.

dried, seated

has swallowd back

nothing belongs

to them, but everything.

the salt of th sea.

the sun

n the chin up. flies

when walking

astray. 2 the solid anchor

pasta

and candy

chlorine n fishing hooks.

th smell of rat and shaved nape

the tired forehead

the

smile hidden within truth.

like something written deep inside my muscles

written with knottd threads

its useless but its food 4 thoght

i was spinning around on my axis and saw thousand

f angels draw their blu crossbow

n as a constellation

a fw millimetrs

from the ground now

2 think

abt ownin nothing

but alwz wanting 2 touch t all

DD