The Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, in collaboration with ENSBA – Lyon – École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, presents the first solo exhibition in Italy by Julien Creuzet, a participant in the Postgraduate Programme promoted by ENSBA – Lyon.
Standard & Poor’s, on the Way, the Price of Glass brings together a group of works belonging to the ongoing project Standard & Poor’s, initiated by Creuzet in 2011.
Inspired by the name of one of the major international rating agencies based in the United States, the series consists of a body of works that intertwine references to the artist’s personal history with the financial dynamics and power structures that govern the functioning of the contemporary world.
On the one hand, the title of the series refers to the crisis of popular sovereignty in the face of financial powers; on the other, it functions as a powerful allegory of the present, playing on the literal meanings of the two terms that compose it. In his works, Creuzet makes use of standard, economical elements (such as Brazilian wooden slats or Murano glass), easily found in many cities around the world. The strategy of standardizing goods and the systems of exchange connected to them, in order to allow for faster international circulation of products, has inexorably contributed to transforming the economies and everyday lives of many communities.
Financial expansion has always been linked to an international dimension and to the consequent trauma of colonization. Today, the abstraction of financial power corresponds to the tangible economic crisis suffered by broad segments of the population in different areas of the globe, regardless of their geographical location. In his works, Creuzet creates short circuits between different materials, visions and personal memories, research into the past and investigations of the present, giving rise to situations open to multiple interpretations by the viewer.
At first glance seemingly innocuous, the works of Standard & Poor’s reveal, in the tensions and instabilities that run through them and in the details that compose them, the violence inherent in the power relations that govern human history and the present. Standard & Poor’s, on the Way, the Price of Glass in particular brings together a series of works related to glass and to the process of crystallization at its core. One of the first objects of exchange used by colonizers to obtain gold, glass is today one of the most widespread souvenirs to be found in many cities around the world affected by mass tourism.
Standard & Poor’s, on the Way, the Price of Glass offers the Foundation’s audience the opportunity to deepen reflection on the current financial crisis through the cross-disciplinary gaze of Julien Creuzet.
