Untitled

A transparent plastic sheet, worn and pierced, covers and reveals the background of a sheet of kraft paper that is crumpled and torn in various places. A minimal work of great radicalism and rare visual strength unfolds before our eyes. Using a device dear to David Hammons, it plays with the modesty of the materials, which draw as much from the history of art—the use of discarded material at work since cubism and the conquests of Picasso, through to Arte Povera—as from a social statement—the paper, the cardboard on which one lies on the street, the tarpaulin which shelters the homeless. The skilful composition, the superimposition of planes, the coloured values, the materiality, the restraint, the transparency: the artist makes a painting with a simple sheet of paper with raw tones and a readymade plastic glazing, without a frame, fixed modestly to the wall. With great virtuosity, Hammons elevates the preciousness of discarded materials, radically questioning hierarchies of values, great painting and its movements.

This work was presented for the first time in 2021 by the Pinault Collection in the inaugural exhibition of the Bourse de Commerce, entitled "Ouverture".