DUFRENE, FRANCOIS - s/t

Fran-ɬßois Dufr-ɬ™ne (1930-1982) is one of the leading artists from the post-War European and French art scene. He played a key role in many of the initiatives of Lettrism, Nouveau Réalisme and sound poetry. In Fran-ɬßois Dufr-ɬ™nes oeuvre, art and poetry intersect in a reciprocal experimentation of the possibilities of transgression of their specific grammars. His oeuvre constitutes a singular example of this special relationship between art and language, which throughout the 20th century proved to be one of the most fertile grounds for expanding the limits seemingly imposed on Western art via the history of artistic genres. Many of his artistic creations use objects retrieved from the urban context, such as posters or stencils, or use the voice in non-linguistic contexts. Examples of the latter include his creation of the crirhythm, wherein he reinvented sound poetry and the relationship between performance and text. The present release attempts to present Fran-ɬßois Dufr-ɬ™nes work as a totality, wherein it would be artificial to separate his status as a poet from that as a visual artist. Poems, books, records, recordings, reverse sides of posters, stencils, films and photographs documenting the artists actions are combined together in a mosaic that makes it possible to reinterpret Fran-ɬßois Dufr-ɬ™nes work as one of the most singular adventures of his epoch, and also re-evaluate the relevance of the challenges he posed to contemporary culture. This album includes the fantastic crirhythm from 1970 titled Belle nuisances hantez nos nuits," the complete "Osmose-Art" from 1969 where crirhythms are superimposed to classical music, "Eryximaque" and two "Lecture-collage" from 1965 as well as the 1958-70 "Comptinuum." All the sound works presented on the CD are also included in the 4LP boxset anthology issued by Alga Marghen and titled Oeuvre Désintégrale. Full color catalog in A4 size, 250 pages, all texts translated in English, French and Portuguese. The book includes a large selection of experimental visual works dating from 1957 to 1981 as well as the biography, essays and original texts (among them "Pragmatics of Crirhythm" and "The Crirhythm and the Rest," both from the mid-1960s). Full discography and filmography are also included. First edition of this large catalog, the first ever to fully document the work of Fran-ɬßois Dufr-ɬ™ne." - Alga Marghen.