Catalogue > At random

Iván Argote

Le Fond de la Seine

Experimental doc. | 4k | color | 16:16 | Colombia, France | 2023

What would La Seine say to us if she could talk to us? Does it remember everything we've dreamed, imagined and said about it? Its luminous passages, its dark corners? All its secrets? Words of love? Sorrows? Le Fond de la Seine speaks to us in the first person, revealing a poetic portrait of a river charged with life, luminosity, stories and dark spaces. This portrait, created using underwater and landscape images, narrated by a powerful voice and accompanied by a moving soundtrack, builds as the film progresses. From its timid source, the origin of many Paleolithic myths, through gentle, crystalline corners that slowly become a mighty mass of water, industrial road, urban passage and power that finally empties into the ocean, merging heart and soul with all the bodies of water on earth. Le Fond de la Seine speaks to us in a sensitive way, about the feelings and fantasies we project towards this river we know so well, yet which hides so much from us.

Iván Argote, Bogotá 1983, lives in Paris. Iván Argote is a Colombian artist and film director based in Paris. Through his sculptures, installations, films and interventions, he questions our relation with others, with power structures and belief systems. He develops strategies based on tenderness, affect and humour through which he generates critical approaches to dominant historical narratives. In his interventions on monuments, large-scale ephemeral and permanent public artworks, Iván Argote proposes new symbolic and political uses of public space. Argote studied graphic design, photography and new media at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Art (ENSBA) in Paris. Solo exhibitions include: 'TO MOVE AND BE MOVED', KØS Museum, Copenhagen, DK (2024); 'The Burden of the Invisible', SCAD MOA, Savannah, GE (2024); 'Prémonitions', Perrotin, Paris, FR (2022); ‘Aliens en Madrid’, Albarrán Bourdais, Madrid, ES (2022); ‘Chaflierplatz’, Dortmunder Kunstverein, DE (2021); ‘A Place for Us’, Perrotin, New York, US, (2021); ‘All Here Together’, Artpace, San Antonio, TX, US, (2021); ‘Juntos Together’, ASU Museum, Phoenix, USA (2019); ‘Radical Tenderness’, MALBA, Buenos Aires (2018); ‘Somos Tiernos’, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico (2017); ‘Somos’, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo (2017); ‘La Venganza del Amor’, Perrotin, New York (2017); Let’s write a history of hopes, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, BR (2014); La Estrategia, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013 ); Sin heroísmos, por favor, CA2M, Madrid, (2012) . Works by the artist are included in the permanent collections of numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum (New York, US); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); ASU Art Museum (Phoenix, US); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami, US); Colección de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá, Colombia); Kadist (San Francisco, US); MACBA (Barcelona, Spain).