Alice Goudsmit /2003


"The media is the vehicle" in the actions and video works of Thierry
Geoffroy/ Colonel. The French born artist and Chevalier de l' ordre des arts
et des lettres has in his different roles - as the professional tourist, the
immigrant and latest, the active immigrant - successfully obtained
"visibility" through perpetual interventions in the Danish media within the
last years.

Focusing on the speed in which news, fashion and moving images are
produced and consumed, he is concerned with the question of how the visual
arts can adapt to the premises given by a media driven society. As a kind of
"users guide" to the media landscape, his work lights up the rapid
circulation of texts and images.

In the crossover between performance and film, his semi-documentary
videos appear regularly on the national broadcasting channel DR 2 as
"fill-ins" instead of commercials. The artist himself appears as Capitain, a
figure between Monsieur Hulot and Inspector Clouseau. He acts like an
awkward jester of the modern world holding up a mirror to the viewer

 His videos function as comments on the (Danish) society, it's fears,
complexes and charms, as seen through the eye of an "intruder". Ironically
unwrapping private subject matters in the public channels of TV and
newspapers, he renders visible the current melt down of the borders between
private and public. In the blend of real characters and fictitious acting,
Colonel becomes a charming trickster, seducing the audience into
selfexamination.

Irritatingly unidentifiable, the films sharpen the awareness of the
viewers by evading all categories. Just as Colonel himself juxtaposes Danish
with French, inside with outside and art with life, the impact of his work
lies in its ambiguity.

After his show at Sprengel Museum, Hannover last year, Thierry
Geoffroy/ Colonel shows now at Galerie Olaf Stüber a collection of his
latest media works, as well as a series of objects, the accessories and
properties appearing in his films. As bits of his directed truth, the
objects become the ironic evidence of a reality created in the media.