What do we know about Unglee ? That he loved tulips and their fragrance, photography, cinema, that he had two wives and a male lover unless he had many more, that he cultivated his tulips in Melun for a while, or elsewhere, that celebrity played a very important role in his career, as is shown by his visits in Hollywood or at the MoMA, unless it was on the Riviera.
But who are we talking about here ? A fictional character such as the one we discover in his Disparitions (Disappearances) ? The artist as much at ease with studio photography than with photomontage, with a cinematographic form of writing than with parody ? Whoever would try to see through the complexity of the character Unglee would soon realize the purposelessness of his enterprise, the deception being intentional and the information shared as factual and precise as scarce.
Better then stick to the signs and forms left by Unglee as many clues of a work as conceptual as it is sensational or sensual, likely to capture «l’air du temps» - the spirit of the times - (if only to use the name of the perfume which appears in his film Radio-Serpent, 1980) with humor and impertinence…
Extract from Signalement Unglee, by Audrey Illouz.
UNGLEE: On le croyait heureux
Past exhibition