Bullet Through Glass at Lyles & King

Artists: Thomas Fougeirol, Jo-ey Tang, Harold Edgerton

Exhibition title: Bullet Through Glass

Venue: Lyles & King, New York, US

Date: March 25 – April 30, 2017

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Lyles & King

Bullet Through Glass.
Milk finds its form in other things.
Soy. Rice. Oat. Wheat. Almond. Hemp. Barley. Spelt. Cashew. Hazelnut. Walnut. Coconut.
Sesame. Flaxseed. Chia Seed.
Macadamia.
Mother’s Milk.
Father’s Milk.
Curdle clear the universe.

Bullet Through Glass.
Heavier Than Air.

Bullet Through Glass.
Slow Food.
Slow photograph.

Bullet Through Glass.
Exceeds the time of thinking. Quicker.
Than I am, and so, you are,
Capable, éviter, construction.
One. While another.

Bullet Through Glass.
Consciousness of bullet.
Through.
Consciousness of glass.

The exhibition Bullet Through Glass is composed of paintings, sculptures, and site-specific interventions by Thomas Fougeirol and Jo-ey Tang. The 1962 photograph, Bullet Through Glass, by Harold Edgerton has been chosen by the artists as both the exhibition’s title and its locus point.

Harold Edgerton (1903-1990) Edgerton worked on a series of macrophotography as a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in 1933. To produce this image, Edgerton set up a microphone to trigger the strobe through the supersonic wave of a .30 caliber bullet piercing a thin sheet of Plexiglas. The resulting image, which is essentially a shadowgram, has been turned 90 degrees, and installed horizontally for this exhibition, so that visitors would approach the image to find themselves encountering a map of their own trajectory in the gallery.

Edgerton’s most iconic image is that of Milk Drop Coronet (1957), and his multiflash photography as in Densmore Shute Bends the Shaft (1938). Other images using bullets are: Bullet Through Apple, Bullet Through Three Balloons, Cutting the Card Quickly, and Bullet Through Flame (Schlieren Method) (with Kim Vandiver). He also took photographs of atomic bomb explosions, at Nevada Proving Grounds, on commission for the Atomic Energy Commission, and sonar photography.

On Bullet Through Glass:
This photo is made without a camera or lens; the silhouetted exposure lasted less than one microsecond. The image was accomplished by placing a sheet of film in a film holder behind the one-eighth-inch thick plastic sheet and a Microflash in front of it. Careful examination reveals shock waves striking the microphone at the bottom of the picture. The shock waves and hot gases from the bullet were made visible by the refraction of light around them. The irregular black spots to the right were caused by Plexiglas shards puncturing the film.
— Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton by Gus Kayafas, Estelle Jussim (1987)

Thomas Fougeirol lives and works between Bushwick, Brooklyn and Ivry, Paris. In Paris, he runs the non-profit exhibition space, DUST, which houses The plates of the present, the photogram residency program he has run since 2013 with Jo-ey Tang. Fougeirol sees painting as what art historian Valérie da Costa calls “a mental trompe l’oeil…. a de-structured pictoral narrative…the dialectic between what is tactile and what is visible.” In Artforum, Mara Hoberman notes that rather than painterly, Fougeirol’s works are “printerly…reconciliations between the paintings’ atmospheric effects and their tactile crusts…corroborating Fougeirol’s fascination with forces beyond his control, whether specific chemical processes or the universal laws of nature (gravity, flow patterns), and describe a cyclical, pointedly random process of renewal.”

Fougeirol holds a DNSEP from École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris and is the recipient of the 1998 Coprim Foundation Award. He has shown with Praz-Delavallade, Paris; CLEARING, Brooklyn, and was included in Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition at the Margulies Collection in Miami, and From Pre-History to Post-Everything at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. Acquisitions have been made by Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Musée Estrine, Saint Remy de Provence (FR); Fondation Louis Vuitton pour l’art contemporain (FR); FNAC, Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, FR; Fondation Antonio Perez, Cuenca (ES); Collection Chanel; FRAC Haute Normandie, Rouen (FR); The Margulies Collection, Miami; and Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico. Fougeirol is represented by Praz-Delavallade, Paris.

Jo-ey Tang is a Hong Kong-born American artist, curator, and writer living and working between Paris and Nice. He was a curator at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014-2015) and art editor of n+1 (2009-2014). He is currently a research resident at Villa Arson, Nice. Tang shifts originary forms over time in his work, using the movements between media – in sound, speech, text, image, objects, and surface-based works – to form new material and technological genealogies. His work negotiates physical being with philosophical and spiritual ideas about life and death. Often, he uses his previous exhibitions and curatorial projects as source material. In Artforum, Phil Taylor describes the works of Jo-ey Tang as “encoded pictures borne of the moment of an encounter,” and notes that his “artifacts of sociability suggest the rituals of consumption that assuage and mediate anxious interactions…(and) suffuses the exhibition with a sense of longing that’s leavened by potential.”

Tang is the founder of curatorial projects The Notary Public and Ring The Clock, and a frequent contributor to Artforum, Flash Art, and LEAP. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute, and Master of Fine Arts from New York University. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Komplot, Brussels; Arrow Factory, Beijing; and Interim, Oakland. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris; Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris; Porcino, Chert, Berlin; Taylor Macklin, Zurich in Galveston; and Exile, Berlin. His work has been included in exhibitions at Institut d’Art Contemporain IAC —Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, FR; Occidental Temporary, Villejuif, FR; Soloway, Brooklyn; and The Suburban, Oak Park. He has curated or organized exhibitions and projects at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Praz-Delavallade, Paris; Rupert, Vilnius, LT; chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai; and FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague.