Born in May 68, Martin Le Chevallier has been developing a substantial body of work since the end of the 1990s, one in which he brings his critical eye to bear on contemporary myths and ideologies.

His first work, Gageure 1.0 (Wager 1.0,1999), takes the “spectator-cum-guinea pig” through the world of corporate discourse in the form of a labyrinthine arborescence on CD-ROM. After this project, he produced a series of games (Flirt 1.0, 2000, a game of seduction made from American film noir movie excerpts; then Vigilance 1.0, 2001, a game of video surveillance) and interactive videos. During his artist residency at the French Academy in Rome in 2000-2001, he made Félicité (Bliss), an evocation of an idle utopian society, and Oblomov, a minimalist adaptation of the novel by Ivan Gontcharov. This cycle of interactive videos came to an end in 2005 with Le Papillon (The Butterfly), the story of a character whose life is upset by the impatience of viewers.

Le Chevallier often uses the very instruments and processes that characterize our times as constituent elements in his representations of them. Witness the way in which consumerist pathologies are conjured by a vocal telephone server (Doro bibloc, 2003) and the security utopia by a “coming attractions”-type trailer (Safe Society, 2003). In 2007, the artist created a “fair” piece for the Fiac, in the form of a painted wood polyptych, in an ironic tribute to the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy (NS).

Le Chevallier’s recent pieces work on the basis of an interference with reality. In this vein, he asked a consulting firm to propose a strategy for him to attain glory (The Audit, 2008); he traveled in procession to Brussels with a miraculous European flag (The Holy Flag, 2009); he secured a Tuileries Gardens pool with remote-controlled, toy police boats (Ocean Shield, 2009); and he set up viewpoint binoculars overlooking a hypermarket (“Slowing Your Blinking” exhibition, 2010).

As a counterpoint to these contextual projects, the artist has pursued his film work. A case in point is “2008” (2010), at once a film and an installation, which presents a picaresque narrative of globalisation.

Safe Society
2003
Video, 1 mn 50, 2003

It’s within an advertising time frame that the key concepts of a new security world are displayed. Low-fat butter, alcohol-free whiskey, non-lethal weapons… The right to be protected associated with the ban of putting oneself in danger thus carefully opens the way to zero-risk. Indemnified disasters, limited responsibilities, desalienated work… The video game images, which are often more dynamic and spectacular than their movie models mix daily and extraordinary events. Caffeine-free coffee, guilty-free exploitation, killed-free war. Safe society, coming soon!