Lying Weapon on the Beach is the catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition by French artist Benoît Maire spiaggia di menzogne (Lying Beach) at Fondazione Giuliani (4 October – 14 December 2013), curated by Adrienne Drake. Using a wide range of media, including sculpture, photography, text, film and performance, Maire aims to construct an aesthetic system in which words and concepts emerge through visual and sculptural devices. His work, based upon philosophical, artistic and literary references, questions the affective value of a theory.
The edition, whose title is given by the names of the three sections of the catalogue (Lying, Weapon and Beach), is composed of a book and a DVD. The book consist of a collection of photographs taken by Benoît Maire during his exhibitions spiaggia di menzogne (Lying Beach) at Fondazione Giuliani in Rome and Weapon at David Roberts Art Foundation in London (2013), uniting both exhibitions into a common investigation by the artist. Both the sequence of photographs and the video are a visual story telling, the artist’s personal point on his work.
spiaggia di menzogne (Lying Beach) is an investigation into the act of seeing and the process of measuring which embodies the relationship that human beings maintain to their surrounding environment. In Weapon Benoît Maire observes how measuring devices disrupt and pervert our relation to the world. Either through performative actions captured on video, or through assemblage, the object gains a new meaning and function: it becomes a weapon and takes on violent associations.