L'aurore Samedi

Swiss duo Bastien Aubry and Dimitri Broquard are chiefly known for subjecting artisanal Swiss ceramics to all manner of gestural “vandalism” and painterly “perversion”. Working from their studio on the outskirts of Zurich, the former graphic designers make sculptures that happily twist and conflate traditional techniques to forge a kind of punk surrealism, with poetic accidents and elegantly unwieldy forms butting heads in plain view.

We can trace a similar line of thought through the duo’s new artist book L’aurore Samedi (The Aurora on Saturday), a publication that presents Aubry/Broquard’s expanded painting practice. Made in reaction to images found in the Smith-Lesouëf Library, Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz/Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques in Paris, the book acts as a kind of propositional space, where Aubry/Broquard allow their rough, nonetheless controlled gestures to offer playful new possibilities for these otherwise sedate images drawn from the archive.