Aurélie Froment’s work is permeated by the principle of narration. The oeuvre, which takes shape through a diverse range of media, is often the outcome of research or a work of association combining texts, images and films. Cinema, its imaginary nature, its form, and collective memory are all so many references which punctuate and shape his work. The artist was himself once a projectionist in a Paris cinema. Underground enigmas and meanings thus fill Aurélien Froment’s work. So in the exhibition Promotion (Espace Paul Ricard, Paris, 2002), the artist paid tribute to the film-maker Werner Herzog in the form of a model boat re-creating a scene from Fitzcarraldo (1981). Herzog’s film presented the utopian construction of an opera in the middle of the jungle. This principle of constructing an isolated building slap bang in the middle of a natural and hostile element also recurs in the film The Apse, the Bell and the Antelope, made in 2005 during a residency at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, in which Roger Tomalty guides us through Arcosanti, that “city of the future” designed by Paolo Soleri in the middle of the Arizona desert in 1970. The narrative principle also takes form in the book as object, a recurrent element in the artist’s work (De l’Ile à hélice à Ellis Island, 2005; La légende vivante, 2009).
Aurélien Froment (Angers, 1976) studied at the Rennes Regional School of Fine Arts, and at Nantes, graduating in 2000; he also studied at Manchester Metropolitan University. At the moment, he lives and works in Paris. He was awarded the Prix de la jeune creation Mulhouse 001 (2001) and has taken up several artist’s residencies in different European cities. On several occasions his works have been shown at the FIAC, and many exhibitions of his work are held annually in galleries and art centres in France (Arides zones, Le lieu unique, Nantes, 2006; Paysages, marines, scenes de guerre, Musée départemental d’art contemporain, Rochechouart,2011; Une exposition comme les autres, Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2011), and abroad (The Space of Words, MUDAM, Luxembourg,2009; Centre Culturel Français, Milan, 2011).
