Reanimation no. 2/5, 1993

In Reanimation, Alexandre Perigot incorporated nearly two hundred various instructional drawings, setting them in motion and presenting the viewer with a sequence of rapidly changing images. The pictures, of various quality in terms of aesthetics but always concise in form and message, explain concepts such as the handling of an electric nail file, seat belt fastening, condom application, hair product application and Polaroid camera use. The artist varies the speed of the animation, zooms in on certain details and combines drawings from different instructions in such a way that it is at times difficult to determine what the images refer to. The animation is accompanied by fast mechanical clangs that lend a rhythm to the changing pictures.

Perigot makes use of drawings that reach the end of their life cycle once the function they describe is successfully performed. They are anonymous – their creators and their artistic valour are of no consequence – all that matters is their function. Perigot detaches them from their context and, by including them in his own pieces, endows them with new meaning. The purely functional illustrations take on the status of objets trouvés, i.e. found objects.

The artist approaches the sequenced diagrams providing instructions for a plethora of things as if it were all a cut-up film, treating each of the instructional drawings like a single frame. In putting the static images in motion and breathing life into them, Perigot takes cues from the instructions they are meant to convey to the user. The illustrated items or their particular elements slide from top to bottom, rotate left or right, and follow arrows which dictate directions for them. The chaos of images, at times alternating very quickly, gives way to a set of whirling hands which perform the individual activities. In Reanimation, Perigot transforms pragmatic instructional diagrams into a work that is in essence “art for art’s sake.” Above all, however, it is a work that exudes playfulness and imagination in turning a set of functional drawings into a dizzying whirlwind of images.

Izabela Kopania