Thierry Geoffroy/ Colonel
June 28 - Aug 1, 2003

"The media is the vehicle" in the actions and video works of Thierry Geoffroy/ Colonel. The French born artist and Chevalier de l' ordre des arts et des lettres has in his different roles - as the professional tourist, the immigrant and latest, the active immigrant - successfully obtained "visibility" through perpetual interventions in the Danish media within the last years.

Focusing on the speed in which news, fashion and moving images are produced and consumed, he is concerned with the question of how the visual arts can adapt to the premises given by a media driven society. As a kind of "users guide" to the media landscape, his work lights up the rapid circulation of texts and images.

In the crossover between performance and film, his semi-documentary videos appear regularly on the national broadcasting channel DR 2 as "fill-ins" instead of commercials. The artist himself appears as Capitain, a figure between Monsieur Hulot and Inspector Clouseau. He acts like a awkward jester of the modern world holding up a mirror to the viewer

His videos function as comments on the (Danish) society, it's fears, complexes and charms, as seen through the eye of an "intruder". Ironically unwrapping private subject matters in the public channels of TV and newspapers, he renders visible the current melt down of the borders between private and public. In the blend of real characters and fictitious acting, Colonel becomes a charming trickster, seducing the audience into selfexamination.

Irritatingly unidentifiable, the films sharpens the awareness of the viewers by evading all categories. Just as Colonel himself juxtaposes Danish with French, inside with outside and art with life, the impact of his work lies in its ambiguity.

After his show at Sprengel Museum, Hannover last year, Thierry Geoffroy/ Colonel shows now at Galerie Olaf Stüber a collection of his latest media works, as well as a series of objects, the accessories and properties appearing in his films. As bits of his directed truth, the objects become the ironic evidence of a reality created in the media.

Alice Goudsmit

With the friendly support of the
Danish Contemporary Art Foundation