On Thursday 16 May 2019, Maud Gourdon will present her new publication 'A Flower is Speaking to a Dog' at BOEKS. In the old convent corridor, she will deconstruct the book page by page by means of spatial interventions, evoking the idea of an enclosed garden made of words and images.

About

A Flower is Speaking to a Dog is the result of Gourdon’s fascination with and study of DNA as a form within which a language can be built. The publication consists of a set of generative texts in which the genetic sequence of DNA functions as an underlying structure or a partiture for the characters.

The book tells the story of two characters: ‘Dog’ and ‘Flower’. Their private relationship is developed by means of rumors, platitudes, and existential crises – enumerations, loops, and repetition. Their conversations question notions of identity and community, family and genetic heritage, love and happiness, cybernetics and transcendence. In the rhythm of these texts, ‘Dog’ and ‘Flower’ coincide irreducibly. They embody one another and in extension contaminate the objects, plants, animals and human figures that surround them.

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Maud Gourdon (˚1991, France) is a visual artist working predominantly with drawing, writing and sculpture. Her works often start from intimate stories and objects she wraps into word play, line play, and multiple forms.

Her work has a background in line drawing and illustration, but since her graduation at KASK in 2017, text and language have been dominating her practice – generating and working with texts and word play across the three different languages that surround her everyday life. Gourdon is interested in private lexicons, mixing text and drawings according to an internal logic not necessarily discernible to outsiders. In her practice, text becomes the material and the starting point for structuring how she thinks about works in space.